REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK   •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   ■    SAN    FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY   •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


REALITIES     AND 
IDEALS 


SOCIAL,   POLITICAL,  LITERARY 
AND    ARTISTIC 


BY 


FREDERIC    HARRISON 


"Ntto  got*- 
THE    MACMILLAN 

1908 

All  rights  reserved 


MPANY 


GENfcfW 


Copyright,  1908, 
By   THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  September,  1908. 


Nortocoti  3J3tess 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


E.   B.   H. 


180704 


CONTENTS 


Preface 


FAGB 

xi 


PART    I 
SOCIAL   AND    POLITICAL 


ESSAY 

I. 

England  and  France  . 

i 

II. 

The  Future  of  Woman 

63 

III. 

The  Realm  of  Woman 

82 

IV. 

The  Work  of  Women 

102 

V. 

Votes  for  Women 

123 

VI. 

Civil  Marriage     . 

138 

VII. 

Religious  Marriage     . 

146 

VIII. 

Marriage  Law  Conflicts 

'51 

-IX. 

Funeral  Rites 

.     156 

X. 

Cremation 

161 

XI. 

Centenaries 

167 

XII. 

Modern  Pilgrimages    . 

175 

XIII. 

The  Use  of  Sunday     . 

180 

XIV. 

The  Veto  on  Drink     . 

.     187 

Vlll 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


ESSAY 

XV.  Church  Disestablishment 

XVI.  The  Recognition  of  Anglican  Orders 

XVII.  The  Crisis  in  the  Church 

XVIII.  Primary  Education  . 

XIX.  Metropolitan  School  Board 

XX.  Parliamentary  Candidature 

XXI.  Reform  of  the  Lords 

XXII.  A  True  Senate  . 

XXIII.  The  Lords  Once  More     . 

XXIV.  Parliamentary  Procedure 


193 

199 
206 
214 
221 
224 
227 
232 

237 
242 


PART  II 

LITERATURE    AND    ART 

I.  The  Uses  of  Rich  Men     . 

II.  The  Revival  of  the  Drama 

III.  Decadence  in  Modern  Art 

IV.  Art  and  Shoddy 
V.  Thoughts  about  Education 

VI.  Education  versus  Examination 

VII.  Literature  To-day    . 

VIII.  "Fors  Clavigera"     . 

IX.  The  Century  Club     . 

X.  Sir  Leslie  Stephen   . 

XI.  Francis  W.  Newman 


263 

278 
293 
3°7 
320 

33i 

344 
348 
352 
360 

371 


CONTEXTS 


IX 


ESSAY 

XII.  Canon  Liddon     . 

XIII.  Sir  Charles  Cookson 

XIV.  Sir  James  Knowles   . 
XV.  Herbert  Spencer 

XVI.  Herbert  Spencer's  '•  Life  " 

XVII.  Municipal  Museums  of  Paris 

XVIII.  Paris  in  1851  and  in  1907 

XIX.  The  Elgin  Marbles 

XX.  A  Pompeii  for  the  Thirtieth  Century 


PAGE 
378 

383 
386 

39° 
393 
399 
414 

432 
446 


PREFACE 

This  volume  is  the  fourth  of  a  series  of  Essays  published 
in  the  present  and  the  preceding  year :  — 

The  Creed  of  a  Layman,   1907, 
The  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense,  1907, 
National  and  Social  Problems,  1908, 
Realities  and  Ideals,  1908. 

The  collected  series  treats  of  Religion,  Philosophy, 
Politics,  Economics,  Literature,  and  Art.  Diverse  as 
are  the  subjects,  and  varied  as  is  the  form,  of  these  studies, 
they  are  all  based  on  one  coherent  scheme  of  thought  — 
the  Positivist  Synthesis  —  a  reorganisation  of  life,  at  once 
intellectual,  moral,  and  social,  by  faith  in  our  common 
Humanity. 

The  forty-four  Essays  have  been  composed  at  various 
times  over  more  than  forty  years ;  yet,  I  trust,  they  will  be 
found  to  be  not  only  consistent  but  mutually  to  explain 
and  complete  each  other.  Some  appeared  in  early  num- 
bers of  English  or  American  Reviews :  some  were  written 
in  the  present  year :  a  few  were  printed  privately  or  were 
known  only  to  colleagues  and  friends.  The  whole  are 
more  or  less  biographic,  and  are  personal  reminiscences 
of  men  whom  I  have  known,  of  movements  in  which  I  have 
had  a  share,  or  of  events  which  I  have  witnessed. 


Xli  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

The  first  and  principal  Essay  on  "England  and  France" 
is  an  extract  from  a  joint  volume  on  International  Policy, 
first  published  in  1866  and  since  reissued.  It  embodies 
the  writer's  mature  belief  in  a  systematic  co-operation  be- 
tween our  two  nations  as  the  key  of  peace  and  progress  in 
Europe.  That  which  half  a  century  ago  was  but  a  distant 
Ideal  to  me  and  to  my  friends,  I  have  lived  to  see  as  a 
Reality  —  accepted,  effective,  and  permanent. 

Three  Essays  on  the  burning  questions  of  the  Rights, 
Duties,  and  Claims  of  Women  have  not  previously  ap- 
peared in  print.  The  fifth  Essay,  on  "  Votes  for  Women," 
has  been  written  in  view  of  the  present  agitation,  which  I 
regard  as  charged  with  tremendous  consequences,  political, 
social,  and  moral. 

Twenty  of  these  papers  were  published  in  the  small 
Positivist  Review  (Watts  &  Co.,  3^.),  in  which  I  have  con- 
tinued to  write,  almost  month  by  month,  since  its  founda- 
tion in  January  1893.  These  Essays  deal  with  current 
topics,  political,  social,  and  literary;  the  subjects  are  of 
perennial  interest,  and  time  has  by  no  means  led  me  to 
modify  the  principles  on  which  they  were  based. 

A  few  papers  appeared  in  the  Press  or  were  addressed 
to  public  associations. 

I  have  to  thank  The  Fortnightly  Review,  The  Nineteenth 
Century,  The  Cornhill  Magazine,  and  The  Forum  of  New 
York  for  courteous  permission  to  include  in  this  volume 
articles  contributed  on  various  occasions  within  the  last 
twenty  years. 

The  twenty  papers  in  Part  II.  on  Literature,  Art,  Drama, 
and  Education  arose  out  of  various  incidents  or  discussions 
of  the  day ;  and  I  trust  that  no  too  punctilious  reader  will 


PREFACE  Xlll 

pronounce  them  to  be  beneath  the  attention  of  a  serious 

moralist :  — 

ridentem  dicere  verum 

quid  vetat  ? 

The  general  theory  of  life  on  which  all  that  I  have  ever 
written  is  grounded,  assumes  that  every  form  of  culture 
and  everything  that  tends  to  brighten  our  existence  should 
contribute  in  its  place  to  the  sum  of  human  happiness :  — 

humani  nihil  a  me  alienum. 
Hawkhurst,  August  1908. 


PART    I 

SOCIAL   AND    POLITICAL 


I 

ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE 

(From  International  Policy,  1866) 

I 

Since  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  war,  the  pivot  upon 
which  the  politics  of  Europe  have  hinged  will  be  found  in 
the  relations  of  England  with  France.  For  fifty  years  this 
fact  has  been  gaining  in  importance  and  distinctness.  It 
has  now,  both  here  and  abroad,  modified  the  thoughts  of 
writers,  politicians,  and  the  public.  The  events  of  each  suc- 
ceeding decade  show  with  new  force,  that  in  union  between 
the  two  great  heads  of  the  West  lies  the  true  protection  to 
Europe  against  attack  from  without,  against  war  from 
within ;  its  best  guarantee  for  freedom,  peace,  and  progress. 
Notorious  disunion  between  the  two  Powers  has  uniformly 
been  the  signal  to  Europe  for  intrigue,  oppression,  embroil- 
ment, and  war.  Order  and  progress  generally  have  gained 
or  lost  just  as  this  union  has  been  intimate  or  weak.  It 
may  be  said  that,  if  this  last  half-century  has  been  to  Europe 
a  period  of  almost  unexampled  prosperity  and  repose,  it 
is  because  the  first  condition  of  both  —  union  between 
the  heads  of  Western  civilisation  —  has  never  been  so 
nearly  realised  before. 

This  union,  however,  has  been  at  best  but  imperfect 
and  precarious.  It  has  not  rested  on  political  doctrine  or 
general  conviction.  Yet,  rudely  shaken  as  it  has  been,  it 
has  sufficed  to  protect  us  from  actual  war,  and,  indeed,  from 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


any  serious  or  protracted  rupture.  We  may  trust  that  each 
year  of  well-used  peace  makes  war  between  England  and 
France  more  and  more  improbable.  It  is  yet,  however, 
far  from  impossible  (written  in  1864).  That  it  should  be 
so,  much  remains  to  be  accomplished  in  both  countries. 
In  both  there  must  arise  very  different  conceptions  of  the 
duties,  the  rights,  and  the  true  interests  of  nations;  a  new 
sense  of  responsibility  in  public  men  and  teachers;  a  con- 
viction here  and  in  Europe  that  such  a  war  would  be  the 
greatest  of  all  European  calamities;  a  belief  that  it  would 
retard  our  progress  for  the  life,  at  least,  of  a  generation. 

A  feeling  between  the  two  great  neighbours,  sufficiently 
friendly  to  preserve  them  from  collision,  has  thus  gradually 
grown  stronger.  It  has  not  yet  become  strong  enough  to  re- 
move the  constant  recurrence  of  quarrels,  fanned  from  time 
to  time  by  the  craft  or  the  folly  of  politicians  and  journal- 
ists in  both  countries.  Nor  has  this  feeling  succeeded  in 
staying  that  ceaseless  undercurrent  of  jealousy,  misunder- 
standing, and  antagonism  that  crosses  the  main  tide  of 
goodwill  which  sets  from  shore  to  shore.  Indefinite,  un- 
stable, and  without  root,  the  harmony  between  England  and 
France  has  been  an  instinct,  and  not  a  principle.  If  it  has 
preserved  us  from  great  evils,  it  has  not  been  able  to  achieve 
any  grand  success.  It  has  sufficed  for  the  calm;  it  will  not 
bear  the  trial  of  the  storm  (1864). 

It  is  the  purpose  of  this  Essay  to  inquire  into  the  mode  by 
which  this  union  might  be  grounded  on  a  permanent  and 
solid  base ;  to  ask  what  must  be  the  conditions,  what  would 
be  the  results,  of  a  standing  and  definite  alliance.  The 
great  European  importance  of  any  such  union  of  England 
and  France  is  this,  that  in  an  especial  manner  these  two 
Powers  represent,  if  they  do  not  guide,  the  grand  movements 
of  our  actual  state  system.     Whatever  the  intellectual  and 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  3 

moral  gifts  of  other  races  in  Europe,  for  the  time  these  two 
nations  are  the  great  political  forces  of  the  West.  They  are 
essentially  co-ordinate,  though  not  antagonistic.  England 
represents  tradition,  stability,  personal  liberty,  law,  indus- 
trialism, and  national  independence.  France  represents 
the  Revolution  and  its  principles;  the  amalgamation  of 
classes;  the  reorganisation  of  the  social  and  the  political 
system;  the  resettlement  of  the  general  state  system;  the 
rights  of  nationalities;  government  at  once  popular  in  its 
origin  and  in  its  aims;  rule  in  the  interests  of  the  many  and 
not  of  the  few.  Each  Power  singly  is  constantly  tempted 
to  force  its  phase  of  progress  extravagantly  and  exclusively  — 
the  influence  of  England  from  time  to  time  being  degraded 
to  the  level  of  commercial  rapacity,  industrial  greed,  and 
stolid  conservatism;  the  influence  of  France  to  that  of 
military  ambition,  revolutionary  disorder,  or  tyranny  veiled 
under  the  name  of  public  welfare. 

Now  these  two  Powers,  the  natural  complement  of  each 
other,  can  never  combine  their  influence  in  any  lasting  or 
grand  object,  except  for  the  general  advantage  of  Europe.1 
Combined,  they  strengthen  the  good  tendencies  of  each  other, 
and  equally  neutralise  the  evil.  Opposed,  they  neutralise 
the  good  and  exaggerate  the  evil.  The  jealousies  which 
each  arouses,  when  acting  with  vigour  by  itself,  are  calmed 
when  that  action  is  jointly  pursued  by  both.  The  policy 
of  France,  when  heartily  in  unison  with  England,  can  awaken 
no  reasonable  terrors  amongst  her  neighbours.  Backed  by 
the  champion  in  Europe  of  peace,  order,  personal  and  national 
liberty,  France  can  promote  her  principles  without  her 
designs  seeming  charged  with  disorder  and  ambition.  Ac- 
tively supported  by  France,  England  appeals  to  the  nations 

1  This  must  be  understood  of  the  action  of  these  Powers  in  Europe 
alone.  Beyond  its  limits,  and  free  from  the  restraints  of  their  position 
towards  our  Continent,  they  occasionally  combine  in  a  joint  oppression. 


4  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

of  Europe  with  a  moral  force  which  has  no  modern  equiva- 
lent. With  her  Catholic  democratic  and  military  neighbour 
at  her  right  hand,  she  stands  up  amongst  the  nations  as  the 
symbol  of  something  more  than  selfish  conservatism;  she 
shakes  off  that  dull  dogmatism  which  has  so  often  nullified 
her  action  and  swung  her  round  against  her  will  to  the  party 
of  blind  resistance.  England  and  France  —  the  Teutonic 
Protestant  parliamentary  and  industrial  power  side  by 
side  with  the  Latin  Catholic  revolutionary  and  dictatorial 
power  —  represent  together  principles  so  various,  and 
comprise  the  dominant  forces  so  nearly,  that  in  any  policy 
in  which  they  cordially  agree  no  element  of  life  is  likely  to 
be  sacrificed,  whilst  all  are  certain  to  be  harmonised. 

No  sooner,  however,  are  the  two  representative  Powers 
estranged,  than  the  principles  which  they  embody  fall  back, 
not  so  much  into  independent  action,  as  into  inevitable 
collision.  In  the  former  case  they  were  kept  in  something 
like  joint  action,  however  imperfectly  consolidated;  in  the 
latter  they  neutralise  each  other  without  any  useful  result. 
Divided,  each  seeks  to  maintain  or  promote  its  special  lines 
of  influence.  Each,  in  the  diplomatic  language  of  the  day, 
seeks  for  new  allies,  and  forms  alliances  which  of  necessity 
are  at  once  precarious  and  unnatural.  Neither  England  nor 
France  can  find  in  Europe  any  equal  and  natural  alliance 
except  with  each  other.  This  broken,  any  other  alliance  is 
a  fresh  source  of  insecurity  both  to  them  and  to  Europe. 

As  the  separation  of  the  two  natural  allies  grows  plainer, 
each  more  obstinately  pursues  its  special  tendencies  and  its 
national  ambitions  in  schemes  which  forebode  danger  to 
Europe,  and  infallibly  arouse  the  suspicions  of  the  other. 
France  agitates  her  neighbours  with  crude  visions  of  a  re- 
settlement of  the  state  system,  partly  revolutionary,  partly 
autocratic;    now   she   parades   her    Catholicism,    now    her 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  5 

military  prestige,  now  her  democratic  zeal;  now  she  is  the 
chief  of  the  Latin  race,  now  the  military  arbiter  of  the  West, 
now  the  apostle  of  the  Revolution.  England  on  her  side  at 
these  moments  assumes  a  part  even  more  odious  and  hardly 
less  pernicious.  She  prides  herself  on  reducing  everything 
to  dead-lock;  she  professes  a  policy  of  inaction,  negative, 
repressive,  and  critical;  she  constitutes  herself  the  grand 
obstructive;  her  diplomacy  is  one  long  non  possumus;  she 
insists  on  every  claim  of  mere  legality,  and  suppresses  every 
claim  of  moral  right;  she  bolsters  up  every  abuse  and  every 
retrograde  and  rotten  system ;  she  sinks  into  the  blindest  and 
most  dogged  conservatism,  and  withdraws  in  a  sort  of  sulky 
despair  from  the  councils  of  Europe,  to  fling  herself  into  the 
task  of  founding  new  empires  in  distant  oceans,  and  plunder- 
ing and  trampling  on  races  of  a  darker  skin.  Other  interests 
in  Europe  she  is  content  to  abandon,  satisfying  herself  with 
barren  protests,  with  checkmating  every  movement  for  good 
or  for  bad,  with  forming  cabals  against  France  to  prevent  her 
from  abusing  the  season  of  confusion  and  dead-lock  which 
the  indifference  of  England  herself  has  produced  (1866). 

These  are  the  seasons  which  the  elements  of  reaction 
in  Europe  welcome  as  their  special  time  of  harvest.  Under 
the  shelter  which  England  then  affords  to  pure  conservatism, 
the  princes  and  the  princelets  of  Germany  grow  bolder  in 
their  career  of  absolutism.  Under  the  shelter  of  the  Catholic- 
ity which  France  at  such  moments  finds  it  convenient  to 
parade,  the  Pope  consolidates  his  feeble  tyranny.  Russia, 
whose  place  is  beyond  the  pale  of  European  politics  proper, 
forms  monstrous  bonds  of  alliance,  first  with  one,  then  with 
another,  Power;  and  safe  behind  the  mask  of  an  external 
civilisation,  she  steals  another  footstep  nearer  to  the  Danube 
or  the  Dardanelles.  The  same  is  true  wherever  a  weaker 
oppressor   is   watching   for   his  time  of   spoliation.     Never 


6  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

does  he  strike  the  blow  until  assured  that  England  and  France 
are  on  too  bad  terms  to  repress  him.  Nor  is  such  a  season 
less  favourable  to  intrigue  than  it  is  to  violence.  It  is  the 
signal  for  a  grand  campaign  of  continental  cabals. 

In  the  recent  history  of  Europe  nearly  every  disaster 
which  the  cause  of  freedom  and  progress  has  suffered  has 
been  caused  during  a  season  of  estrangement,  and  largely 
by  reason  of  estrangement,  between  the  two  great  Powers. 
Attacks  upon  Turkey  by  Russia  demanded  as  their  first 
condition  that  England  and  France  should  be  supposed 
unable  to  combine.  The  Crimean  war  would  not  have  been 
commenced  unless  Nicholas,  in  his  shortsighted  disdain  for 
Napoleon,  had  thought  it  impossible  for  English  statesmen 
to  ally  themselves  with  him.  The  successive  partitions  of 
Poland  have  been  effected  only  under  a  similar  conviction. 
The  petty  spoliation  of  Denmark  was  effected  only  when 
Napoleon  had  been  ostentatiously  rebuffed  in  his  overtures 
towards  a  Polish  intervention.  Austria  triumphed  over 
Hungary  and  Italy  in  1848  in  great  measure  because  she 
knew  that  the  English  and  the  French  Governments  were 
quite  incapable  of  co-operation.  Had  England,  even  by 
her  moral  weight,  accepted  the  demands  of  France  to  aid  in 
freeing  Italy  from  Austria,  she  might  with  some  effect  have 
prevented  the  tyrannical  restoration  of  the  Pope  by  French 
bayonets.  Nor  would  Austria  have  ventured  to  cross  the 
Ticino  in  1859  if  the  close  alliance  of  the  Crimean  war  had 
continued  between  the  heads  of  the  West.  The  diplomatic 
history  of  nearly  every  one  of  the  catastrophes  of  freedom  in 
recent  times  is  a  story  of  persistent  and  wily  efforts  of  the 
oppressor  to  divide  the  policy  of  two  great  Powers,  or  to 
profit  by  their  divisions ;  and  of  efforts  no  less  persistent  by 
the  oppressed  to  bring  these  Powers  into  concert,  or  at  least 
into  the  semblance  of  outward  agreement. 


ENGLAND   AND    FRANCE  7 

By  arguments  negative  and  positive,  by  analogy  as  well 
as  by  example,  it  can  be  shown  that  harmony  between  the 
two  great  Powers  is  essential  to  the  well-being  of  Europe. 
But  has  this  harmony  as  yet  any  permanent  basis?  Have 
the  various  causes  which  have  contributed  to  a  long  peace 
such  solid  foundation  in  principle  as  to  render  peace  a 
certainty  ?  Has  not  mutual  respect  and  a  general  conviction 
of  joint  interest  been  at  the  highest  the  sole  ground  of  union  ? 
Has  anything  like  active  co-operation  been  secured  excepting 
from  causes  at  once  superficial  and  shifting? 

The  cordiality  between  the  two  Governments,  which  from 
time  to  time  the  journals  of  both  countries  announce  with 
fulsome  protestations,  is  generally  the  result  of  little  more 
than  a  party  manoeuvre,  the  commonplace  of  a  feeble  minis- 
try, or  the  device  of  an  intriguing  politician.  How  often 
within  thirty  years  has  the  clique  which  is  called  the  Whig 
party  blustered  and  fawned  before  the  Government  of 
France !  How  often  has  the  ministry  of  England  found  it 
useful  to  flatter  or  to  affront  the  Emperor  Napoleon !  How 
often  has  an  entente  cordiale,  heralded  by  so  much  cheap 
eloquence,  been  broken  in  the  very  year  which  saw  its  rise  — 
to  be  revived  next  year  to  serve  a  parliamentary  division ! 
Cabinet  intrigues,  demonstrations  from  the  press,  compli- 
ments and  feasts  in  palaces,  exert  no  useful  influence  on  the 
politics  of  two  great  races,  and  do  nothing  to  cement  a  union 
between  them.  A  true  union  must  be  made  by  the  nations, 
not  by  ministries;  it  must  be  based  on  principles,  not  pro- 
testations; it  must  start  from  a  common  programme  of 
action,  in  which  the  entire  nation  can  feel  pride,  and  which 
the  entire  nation  in  both  countries  understands. 

Sometimes,  instead  of  being  the  device  of  a  politician, 
a  temporary  alliance  between  the  two  countries  has  arisen 
from  express  or  tacit  agreement  to  permit  to  each  some 


8  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

cherished  object  of  ambition.  Such  occasions  must  always 
be  of  small  importance,  and  are  hardly  possible  at  all  in 
Europe.  But  in  any  case  such  a  union  is  necessarily  pre- 
carious. Real  union  implies,  not  a  compromise  on  special 
matters,  but  a  thorough  understanding  on  the  general 
course  of  European  politics.  If  any  of  the  greater  questions 
are  left  out,  they  will  constantly  recur  to  trouble  the  superficial 
agreement.  But  a  real  unity  of  purpose  on  all  the  questions 
at  issue  will  be  a  union  too  comprehensive  to  be  affected  by 
personal  intrigues,  too  moderate  and  mature  to  give  anything 
but  confidence  to  their  neighbours. 

If  it  is  prudent  to  inquire  on  what  grounds  the  harmony 
of  England  with  France  is  ordinarily  placed,  it  is  dishearten- 
ing to  learn  how  slight  in  reality  these  are.  Commercial 
interest  is  usually  the  sole,  and  certainly  is  the  main,  bond 
of  union  to  which  statesmen  and  writers  commonly  appeal. 
Seldom  do  we  hear  from  one  school  or  the  other  any  principle 
of  policy  which  rises  above  the  sensible  but  obvious  advice 
that  two  neighbouring  nations,  each  with  so  large  a  trade, 
will  probably  increase  it  by  remaining  on  good  terms.  Noth- 
ing more  is  required,  we  are  assured,  for  harmony  and 
prosperity  in  nations  whom  nature  has  designed  for  mutual 
customers  but  unlimited  free  trade  and  general  extension  of 
their  markets.  Vaguely  and  mechanically  from  the  lips  of 
aristocratic  statesmen,  dogmatically  and  passionately  from 
those  of  the  popular  school,  this  is  proclaimed  as  the  sum  and 
substance  of  European  politics.  There  can  be  no  clearer 
proof  of  the  feebleness  of  the  current  political  doctrines. 
Commonplaces  of  this  kind  can  stand  no  serious  test, 
much  less  can  they  produce  any  solid  progress  in  opinion. 
Thus  to  exaggerate  the  importance  of  their  commercial 
interests  and  duties  is  to  do  dishonour  to  both  countries 
at  once.     It   would  not   have  been  heard  of   except  at  a 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  O. 

time  when  economic   ideas  have   supplanted  true  political 
principles. 

Nor   is  this  teaching  less  futile  than   immoral.     France 
in   particular,    for    reasons  —  some   honourable,    some    dis- 
honourable, to  her  national  character  —  can  act,  and  fre- 
quently does  act,  in  open  disregard  to  her  material  interests. 
Both  England  and  France  are  continually  moved  by  currents 
of  feeling,  in  which  all  thoughts  of  the  market  are  swept 
away  like  straws.     In  both  countries  civilisation  has  a  far 
wider  significance  than  this ;  and  the  policy  of  neither  country 
is  invariably  in  the  hands  of  the  shopkeepers.     Each  nation 
is  ready  to   make  efforts  and  sacrifices  for  very   different 
ends.     Hence  Cobden's  Commercial  Treaty  has  been,  in  a 
moral  and  national  sense,  ridiculously  overvalued.     It  is  a 
useful  measure,  and   in   spite  of  the  free-trade  purists,  a 
sensible  measure,  which  does  honour  to  the  conscientious 
economist  who  achieved  it  and  the  adroit  financier  who  made 
it  popular.     On  both  sides  of  the  Channel,  besides  making 
several  towns  or  classes  richer  (which  is  its  principal  result), 
it   has   done   something   towards   promoting   more   friendly 
language,  and  perhaps  more  sincere  goodwill.     But  since  the 
policy  both  of  England  and  France  is  ultimately  directed 
by  the  nation,  and  not  by  the  class  which  principally  benefits 
by  an  improvement  in  trade,  an  alliance  which  is  based  on 
commercial  interest  may  at  any  moment  be  shattered  by 
those  deeper  currents  which  fill  the  nation  with  a  strong 
purpose;    in  fact,  an  alliance  between  two  great  nations  so 
situated,  which  was  based  entirely  on  trade,  would  scarcely 
last  many  months.     Assuredly  it  would  not  enable  the  two 
Powers  to  do  much  for  the  peace  and  prosperity  of  Europe. 
Such  are  the  grounds  on   which   union   with   France   is 
usually  based.     It  is  obvious  that  none  of  these  can  render 
it  lasting.     That  which  has  now  for  so  many  years,  and 


10  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

through  trials  so  severe,  really  maintained  the  good  harmony 
between  them  has  been  the  conviction,  common  to  all  but 
a  few  in  both  countries,  that  the  great  ends  necessary  for  the 
welfare  of  France  are,  in  the  main,  those  necessary  for  the 
welfare  of  England.  Here  the  dregs  of  the  old  aristocratic, 
there  of  the  old  military,  fanatics  nurse  the  malignant  hatred 
of  the  great  war;  but  in  this  generation,  for  responsible 
beings  in  both  countries,  the  old  religious  duty  of  rivalry 
and  antipathy  is  as  completely  extinct  as  the  morbid  passion 
of  national  hate  which  dishonoured  the  fine  nature  even  of 
Nelson.  Frenchmen  are  not  reared,  like  boy  Hannibals, 
to  dream  of  a  tremendous  vengeance;  and  patrician  bigots 
no  longer  clamour  in  our  senate  for  the  extinction  of  a  rival 
Carthage.  But  it  is  obvious  that,  as  a  fixed  ground  of 
national  policy,  the  vague  sense  of  common  interests  between 
the  two  countries  needs  to  be  placed  on  a  basis  far  more 
systematic  and  definite.  The  policy  of  two  nations  such  as 
England  and  France,  acknowledged  as  the  heads  of  civilisa- 
tion in  Europe,  must  of  necessity  embrace  great  European 
objects,  must  take  some  attitude  towards  the  principal  move- 
ments of  the  Continent,  and  satisfy  the  conscience  and  the 
honour  of  two  generous  races. 

Ends  such  as  these  can  hardly  be  effected  by  commercial 
treaties,  by  free  trade,  or  by  large  increases  in  consumption. 
The  most  confirmed  intention  of  buying  only  in  the  cheapest 
and  selling  only  in  the  dearest  market  is  liable  to  be  deranged 
by  very  singular  perturbations.  Nothing,  in  fact,  can  rise 
to  the  dignity  of  a  national  policy  but  a  broad,  wise,  and 
comprehensive  estimate  of  the  true  situation  of  modern 
Europe.  Neither  country  would  be  assuming  its  natural 
position  unless  it  is  prepared  to  face  resolutely  the  conditions 
in  which  it  stands,  and  to  assume  responsibilities  called  forth 
by  each  occasion.     Nor  will  such  a  policy  be  of  any  perma- 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  II 

nent  use,  unless  it  is  thoroughly  in  harmony  with  the  history 
and  traditions  of  both  people ;  unless  it  is  felt  to  be  the  true 
destiny  pointed  out  by  centuries  of  national  life ;  unless  it 
can  take  hold  at  once  of  the  higher  minds  of  the  nation  and 
the  instincts  and  sympathies  of  the  mass  of  the  people. 

Any  harmony  between  England  and  France  that  professes 
to  be  based  on  anything  short  of  a  principle  such  as  this 
can  be  nothing  but  a  mockery  or  a  phrase.  Each  nation 
must  have,  and  will  have,  its  national  policy  more  or  less 
systematic,  more  or  less  comprehensive.  iVnd  it  follows 
with  complete  certainty  that,  unless  the  policy  of  each  tends 
in  the  main  towards  the  same  end,  they  will  sooner  or  later 
result  in  a  conflict.  It  is  the  tendency  of  such  a  conflict, 
even  where  it  stops  short  of  overt  hostility,  to  produce  a 
minimum  of  good  and  a  maximum  of  evil  in  the  influence  of 
each.  Not  vague  protestations  of  friendship,  not  common 
interests  in  trade,  commercial  treaties,  or  industrial  partner- 
ship, can  secure  us  from  the  constant  risk  of  rupture.  If 
harmony  between  England  and  France  is  good  at  all  for  the 
countries  themselves  and  for  their  neighbours,  the  conditions 
of  that  harmony  are  not  to  be  mistaken.  Each  country 
must  have  a  settled  and  deliberate  scheme  of  policy;  the 
policy  of  both,  in  the  main,  must  coincide.  It  must  be  worked 
up  into  systematic  concert  with  good  faith,  forbearance,  and 
patience;  and  it  must  tend  not  towards  the  individual 
interests  of  either  so  much  as  the  permanent  welfare  of  the 
great  state  system  which  they  control. 

The  task  is  to  learn  whether  and  in  what  way  such  a 
union  of  policy  is  practically  possible.  Can  any  joint  action 
of  the  two  Powers  be  shown  to  accord  with  the  history  and 
traditions,  with  the  actual  position  and  necessities,  of  each  ? 
For  this  view  it  will  be  well  to  take  a  survey,  first,  of  the 
historical  relations  of  the  two  nations  throughout  the  course 


12  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

of  recent  and  indeed  of  modern  history ;  secondly,  of  the 
actual  state  system  of  Europe,  and  the  position  and  functions 
which  they  occupy  within  it. 

II 

It  is  only  at  the  close  of  the  long  wars  which  marked 
the  ruin  of  feudalism  that  true  political  relations  exist  between 
England  and  France  as  parts  of  a  European  body  of  states. 
From  that  time  to  the  present,  a  period  of  440  years,  it  will 
be  found  that  whenever  the  policy  of  the  two  countries  has 
been  vigorous  and  wise,  whenever  they  have  both  been 
fulfilling  their  natural  functions  in  that  body  of  states,  the 
relations  between  them  have  been  friendly  and  never  directly 
hostile.  On  the  other  hand,  whenever  those  relations  have 
been  hostile,  it  has  been  when  one  or  other  was  pursuing  a 
policy  ruinous  in  itself,  and  which  it  has  ultimately  been 
forced  to  abandon.  The  wars  of  England  and  France 
mark,  in  fact,  their  grand  crimes  and  blunders  as  nations. 
Their  normal  condition  —  the  condition  of  their  grandest 
national  successes  —  is  peace ;  or  rather,  what  is  more  than 
peace,  co-operation.  It  is  a  significant  fact,  and  one  which 
we  too  seldom  remember,  that,  mere  military  glory  apart 
(which  can  be  won  in  the  worst  as  in  the  best  of  causes), 
all  that  is  noblest  as  political  achievement  throughout  the 
vicissitudes  of  European  complications  for  four  centuries, 
the  policy  of  all  the  true  statesmen  who  have  left  us  a  heritage 
of  wisdom,  has  been  characterised  by  the  maintenance  of 
union  with  France. 

Our  greatest  statesmen  and  their  greatest  statesmen  — ■ 
those  whose  policy  we  now  can  profitably  recall  —  all  uni- 
formly combined  in  this.  It  has  been  repudiated  only  by 
those  whose  policy  has  been  cancelled  by  events.     The  preju- 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  1 3 

dices  which  have  sprung  from  our  ancient  and  from  our 
recent  triumphs  in  war  are  so  strong  on  us  that  propositions 
like  these  are  regarded  as  a  paradox.  They  form,  however, 
rules  without  any  true  exception.  There  have  been  times 
when  the  policy  of  England,  or  when  that  of  France,  was  in 
desperate  defiance  of  all  their  duties  and  their  traditions. 
At  such  moments  the  weight  of  the  other  has  been  thrown 
into  the  opposite  scale,  and  furious  contests  have  ensued. 
But  their  normal  relations  have  been  those  of  peace.  And 
no  broad  survey  of  history  can  obscure  the  truth  that,  from  its 
consolidation  in  the  fifteenth  century  down  to  the  latter  half  of 
the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.,  the  general  tendency  of  the  French 
monarchy  has  been  towa  ds  harmony  with  the  English. 

The  patience  and  address  with  which  the  sagacious 
Louis  XL  averted  the  vainglorious  invasion  of  Edward  IV., 
the  transparent  want  of  purpose  that  invasion  betrayed,  the 
anxiety  of  Louis  for  peace,  the  ease  with  which  the  English 
king  and  his  council  allowed  themselves  to  be  cajoled,  mark 
the  close  of  the  long  national  feud,  the  substitution  of  nations 
for  fiefs,  and  statecraft  for  military  adventure.  The  French 
policy  of  Henry  VIII.  is  little  but  a  repetition  of  the  conduct 
of  Edward.  There  is  the  same  pretentious  invasion,  the 
conventional  war-cry,  the  same  willingness  to  treat,  the  same 
mutual  respect  and  desire  for  peace.  With  the  Louises, 
Ferdinands,  and  Henrys  of  the  fifteenth  century  these  con- 
flicts were  due  rather  to  inveterate  habit  than  to  active 
animosities ;  and  they  had  too  similar  and  too  arduous  duties 
at  home  to  make  any  of  them  very  desirous  of  serious  wars. 
With  the  sixteenth  century  —  the  age  of  Henry  VIII. , 
Francis,  and  Charles  V.  —  the  actual  state  system  of  Europe 
comes  clearly  into  view.  We  have  now  the  existing  national 
limits,  definite  international  relations,  and  permanent  ob- 
jects of  state. 


14  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

It  may  be  difficult  in  the  confusion  which  precedes  the 
first  great  settlement  to  trace  exactly  any  intelligible  policy; 
but  amidst  all  the  kaleidoscopic  complications  of  the  time 
there  stands  out  clearly  the  growing  importance  of  England 
in  the  European  system,  the  preponderance  which  at  any 
moment  it  can  give  to  France,  the  immense  force  of  both  of 
them  united,  and  the  real  affinity  of  their  true  interests  and 
national  objects.  Capricious  as  was  the  policy  of  Francis 
and  that  of  Henry,  personal  and  trivial  as  were  the  motives 
which  often  controlled  it,  it  was  in  the  main  the  policy  of 
natural  allies  and  not  of  natural  enemies.  Cui  adhmreo 
protest  was  the  famous  motto  of  Henry,  —  a  motto  as  true 
now  as  it  was  then.  It  did  not  mean  the  destruction  of 
France.  And  when  at  last  Henry  threw  in  his  lot  with  the 
captive  Francis  at  his  worst  strait,  and  enabled  him  to  re- 
cover his  kingdom,  he  instituted  a  great  maxim  of  policy,  — 
that  England  has  an  interest  in  having  her  neighbour  at 
once  progressive  and  strong,  for  France  has  with  England 
the  joint  protectorate  of  Europe  against  absolute  dominion 
and  retrograde  oppression. 

With  the  growth  of  the  power  of  Charles  V.  (whose  life 
is  justly  taken  as  marking  the  rise  of  our  modern  state  sys- 
tem) there  comes  into  view  clearly  the  principle  which  for 
the  three  succeeding  centuries  has  more  or  less  distinctly 
formed  the  clue  to  European  history.  In  spite  of  serious 
exceptions  and  perturbations,  a  clear  tendency  appears  that 
the  conservative  forces,  both  spiritual  and  temporal,  should 
gather  round  the  House  of  Austria,  and  centre  in  South 
Germany  and  Spain ;  that  the  progressive  forces  are  jointly 
or  alternately  led  by  England  and  France ;  whilst  Italy  and 
the  whole  left  bank  of  the  Rhine  form  at  once  the  battle- 
ground and  the  prize.  During  the  sixteenth  century,  for 
the  most  part,  the  temporal  struggle  is  lost  and  drowned  in 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE 


15 


the  spiritual.  Political  antagonisms  and  affinities  are 
merged  in  the  religious.  The  death-grapple  of  the  two 
faiths  was  nerved  by  a  special  fanaticism,  which  overrides 
all  the  combinations  of  policy,  interest,  and  reason.  Yet 
in  the  midst  of  these  convulsions  the  same  general  tendency 
is  at  work.  France  in  the  struggle  is  torn  into  two  factions ; 
her  position  is  nullified ;  and  her  strength  paralysed, 
whilst  she  is  preparing  for  the  middle  ground  which  in  the 
religious  aspect  of  the  great  contest  she  has  ever  since 
maintained. 

England,  if  not  so  equally  divided,  sways  backwards 
and  forwards  with  still  more  violent  revulsions.  In  the 
meantime  the  House  of  Austria  is  still  the  centre  of  the 
religious  as  of  the  political  reaction.  From  time  to  time  some 
Philip  or  Catherine  steals  in,  like  the  genius  of  evil,  to  lure 
England  or  France  into  opposite  camps.  From  time  to 
time  the  very  existence  of  states  seems  lost  in  the  violence  of 
civic  disintegration.  The  deadly  struggle  in  which  the  life 
of  our  great  sovereign  Elizabeth  was  passed  might  well 
have  blinded  a  mind  less  capacious  and  calm  to  the  true 
affinities  of  states.  But  in  the  worst  of  her  straits,  in  spite 
of  the  danger  to  her  person  and  her  people,  in  spite  of  the 
fanatical  hatred  with  which  both  were  assailed  by  the  court 
party  of  France,  neither  Elizabeth  nor  her  ministers  ever  lost 
sight  of  the  truth  that  England  and  France  in  the  European 
system  are  not  natural  enemies  but  natural  allies.  Yet  this 
great  truth,  which  civil  convulsion  and  religious  frenzy  for 
a  time  had  obscured,  broke  forth  only  into  clear  light  when 
France  had  shaken  off  the  fever  of  reaction,  and  the  wise 
and  noble  policy  of  Henry  IV.  had  begim  to  restore  her  to 
health  and  vigour. 

The  spirit  of  that  great  king  was  well  met  with  that  of 
the  great  queen ;  and  history  can  give  us  no  finer  instance  of 


1 6  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

political  sagacity  than  we  see  in  the  hearty  and  confiding 
alliance  of  these  two  consummate  rulers.  "She  was  another 
self,"  said  Henry;  "the  irreconcilable  enemy  of  my  irre- 
concilable enemies."  Indeed,  if  we  were  to  search  for  the 
type  of  the  natural  attitude  of  the  Governments  to  each 
other,  we  could  have  no  better  form  of  it  than  in  the  history 
of  this  period.  Mutual  confidence  and  respect,  a  generous 
spirit  of  co-operation,  a  consciousness  of  a  common  duty, 
but  a  spirit  always  tempered  by  watchfulness  and  caution, 
was  the  spirit  in  which  they  assumed  their  protectorship  of 
Europe.  This  is  not  the  place  to  analyse  or  weigh  the  famous 
Political  Design  of  Henry,  the  scheme  for  the  pacification 
and  settlement  of  Europe.  Nothing  would  be  more  mistaken 
than  to  regard  it  as  the  chimera  of  one  visionary  brain.  The 
scheme  was  thoroughly  reduced  to  practical  working.  It 
had  gradually  won  its  way  into  the  cautious  mind  of  the 
veteran  Sully.  It  received  the  actual  adhesion  of  a  large 
proportion  of  the  European  Powers,  and  nothing  but  the 
dagger  of  Ravaillac  prevented  its  immediate  execution. 

But  the  scheme,  as  we  read  it  in  Sully,  was  as  thoroughly 
that  of  Elizabeth  as  it  was  that  of  Henry.  She  had  been 
the  earliest  and  the  staunchest  maintainer  of  the  central 
purpose  of  the  design.  It  was  impossible  without  the  active 
co-operation  of  England;  and  on  the  death  of  Elizabeth, 
Henry  regarded  it  as  almost  annihilated.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  decide  upon  its  wisdom  or  its  practicability.  It 
may  be  that,  as  a  reconstructive  system,  it  was  impossible 
01  premature ;  but  the  idea  on  which  it  rested  is  an  idea  as 
definite  as  it  is  true.  That  idea  is  the  reality  of  the  system 
of  states  in  Europe,  the  necessity  for  their  harmony  and 
co-operation,  the  leading  part  which  her  history  and  position 
give  to  France  in  the  common  councils  of  Europe,  the  need 
of  an  intimate  alliance  with  England,  and  the  conviction, 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  1 7 

that  with  both  combined  the  cause  of  good  government, 
progress,  and  peace  resides. 

The  conception  of  the  greatest  of  the  French  kings  long 
ruled  the  policy  of  French  statesmen.  This  grand,  if  prema- 
ture, idea  was  maintained  by  a  series  of  ministers,  wise,  or 
respectable  at  least,  down  to  the  time  when  the  tumid  ambi- 
tion of  Louis  XIV.  ruined  his  country  and  blotted  out  his 
dynasty.  Neither  that  deplorable  catastrophe  nor  the  de- 
lirium of  the  revolutionary  wars  have  succeeded  in  destroying 
it ;  and  it  remains  now,  what  it  was  two  centuries  and  a  half 
ago,  the  deep  conviction  of  thoughtful  minds  on  both  sides 
of  the  Channel,  and  the  true  key  of  European  politics. 

For  a  moment  the  fanatical  party  which  struck  down  the 
great  Henry  in  the  full  maturity  of  his  wisdom  succeeded  in 
perverting  from  its  path  the  public  action  of  his  beloved 
country.  Their  tenure  of  power  was  long  enough  to  com- 
plete that  ill-starred  marriage  with  the  House  of  Austria  — 
that  adulterous  mingling,  it  has  been  said,  of  the  blood  of 
Henry  and  of  Philip.  But  the  genius  of  France,  as  though 
aroused  by  this  outrage,  lived  again  in  the  spirit  of  the  great 
successor  of  Henry;  he  who,  with  yet  greater  difficulties, 
carried  on  the  same  work  with  yet  greater  power  —  the  most 
successful  of  modern  statesmen  — the  profound  and  majestic 
Richelieu.  For  twenty-six  years  the  policy  of  France  was 
directed  on  one  unbending  but  sagacious  system,  which 
almost  created  France  as  a  nation,  if  it  did  not  create  its 
national  character,  and  which  certainly  for  a  century  and  a 
half  stamped  its  impress  on  the  history  of  Europe.  The  first 
act  of  Richelieu  as  minister  was  to  announce  the  return  to 
the  policy  of  the  late  king,  and  to  attempt  to  reopen  the 
English  alliance  by  the  marriage  with  Charles.  At  the  close 
of  his  unbroken  career  the  ground  was  already  prepared  for 
the  settlement  which  resulted  in  the  peace  of  Westphalia; 


1 8  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  settlement  which  for  two  centuries  has  been,  and  still  in 
some  sense  is,  the  basis  of  the  state  system  of  modern  Europe ; 
the  settlement  which  half  realised  the  design  of  Henry,  which 
his  design  might  possibly  have  accomplished  without  the 
thirty  years  of  carnage. 

The  policy  of  Richelieu  is  far  too  strongly  marked  and  too 
well  understood  to  need  any  commentary  here.  It  is  a  policy 
so  systematic  in  principle  and  so  rich  in  its  actual  fruits  that 
it  may  be  taken  as  the  typical  and  historical  policy  of  France. 
As  such  we  can  judge  it.  The  policy  of  France  was  again 
in  the  hands  of  a  great  man,  and  again  it  was  a  policy  in 
substance  the  same.  The  policy  of  England  is  no  longer  in 
the  hands  of  a  great  ruler,  but  becomes  utterly  incoherent 
and  contemptible  under  the  intriguing  bigotry  of  the  race  of 
Stuart.  But  the  policy  of  France  is  not  altered ;  France 
again  assumes  the  leadership  of  the  progressive  movement 
in  Europe,  and  again,  as  a  first  condition,  solicits  the  active 
co-operation  of  England.  The  help  meet  for  him,  which 
in  a  later  generation  he  might  have  found  in  the  political 
genius  of  Cromwell,  Richelieu  was  forced  to  eke  out  by  the 
mere  military  genius  of  Gustavus.  The  influence  of  Eng- 
land under  the  Stuarts  was  nothing  except  when  it  was  evil. 
But  in  spite  of  the  sore  trials  to  his  principles,  in  spite  of 
the  vacillations,  bigotry,  and  falseness  of  the  wretched  Stuart 
courts,  in  spite  even  of  the  demagogic  support  of  La  Rochelle, 
Richelieu  was  never  betrayed  into  a  hostile  attitude  to  Eng- 
land, never  even  overlooked  the  inherent  strength  of  her 
position.  The  English  prisoners  at  Rhe  were  sent  home 
honourably;  no  reasonable  opportunity  of  peace  was  neg- 
lected; and  the  whole  system  of  the  most  systematic  of 
modern  statesmen  supposes  cordiality  and  union  with 
England. 

That  system  was  only  not  carried  out  with  the  full  co- 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  1 9 

operation  of  England  because  for  the  time,  in  her  own  internal 
convulsions,  England  was  withdrawn  from  action  abroad. 
But  it  was  carried  out,  if  not  with  England  herself,  with  the 
natural  allies  of  England,  —  by  the  same  means,  to  the  same 
end,  and  with  the  same  spirit  with  which,  both  before  and 
afterwards,  the  name  of  England  was  identified.  In  the 
hands  of  Richelieu  the  policy  of  Henry  was  modified  and 
developed,  but  it  was  essentially  the  same.  To  concentrate 
and  complete  the  greatness  of  the  country  without  yielding 
to  the  lust  of  covetous  aggression ;  to  conciliate  and  balance 
the  rival  fanaticisms  in  religion  without  giving  victory  to 
either:  to  rest  the  frontiers  of  states  on  geographical  and 
national  bases;  to  establish  liberty  of  conscience  without 
political  anarchy ;  to  humble  the  reactionary  dynasties  with- 
out unlimited  revolution ;  to  determine  the  final  ascendency 
of  the  progressive  over  the  retrograde  system ;  and  to  make 
France  the  heart  of  this  action  by  giving  her  a  moral  rather 
than  a  material  empire  —  such,  in  brief,  was  the  work  of  the 
great  dictator. 

The  policy  of  Richelieu  was  one  so  solidly  based  that  it 
suffered  scarcely  any  interruption  by  his  death;  and  again, 
for  eighteen  years,  his  system  was  continued  by  his  servant 
and  pupil  Mazarin.  The  irregular  conditions  and  the  inferior 
capacity  of  this  ministry  rob  that  system,  if  not  of  its  success, 
at  least  of  its  dignity  and  distinctness.  The  characteristic 
intrigue,  the  shifting  combinations,  and  the  personal  mean- 
ness which  disfigure  the  statecraft  of  Mazarin,  are  but  too 
often  repeated  by  the  anecdote-mongers  of  history  as  the 
substance,  and  not  as  the  adjunct,  of  his  policy.  Viewed  by 
a  broader  light,  it  was  but  the  legitimate  continuation  of  the 
policy  of  Richelieu,  as  that  was  the  legitimate  continuation 
of  the  policy  of  Henry.  The  weapons  of  the  bygone  chiefs 
tremble  in  the  feebler  hands  of  their  successors.     But  they 


20  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

are  yet  sufficient  for  their  work.  How  right  and  systematic 
the  task  was,  the  closing  triumph  of  the  life  of  Mazarin  — 
the  treaty  of  the  Pyrenees  —  draws  in  most  striking  lines. 

When  we  see  the  ruler  of  France  —  even  an  Italian,  a 
churchman,  and  a  cardinal  —  the  virtual  author  of  the 
most  concentrated  of  autocracies,  allying  himself  with  the 
English  Republic,  with  the  acknowledged  head  of  Protes- 
tantism, and  jointly  with  him  labouring  towards  a  common 
object,  securing  the  degradation  of  the  great  Spanish  des- 
potism and  the  definite  ascendency  of  France,  we  recognise 
the  grand  current  of  affairs  shaping  itself  to  its  determined 
course  across  all  the  minor  obstacles  of  individual  wills  and 
disturbing  accidents.  Internal  difficulties  and  the  complica- 
tion of  interests  for  a  time  separated  the  chief  imitator  from 
the  great  rival  of  Richelieu ;  but  as  soon  as  they  thoroughly 
understood  each  other,  so  soon  as  the  relations  of  states 
grew  definite,  the  policy  of  Mazarin  and  of  Cromwell  was 
convergent  and  not  antagonistic.  Both  were  in  the  deepest 
sense  traditional,  both  were  intensely  national,  and  both 
essentially  systematic.  And  it  is  of  high  historical  signifi- 
cance that  in  orbits  so  different  we  find  their  common  pro- 
gression so  similar. 

But  Mazarin,  with  all  his  claims  as  a  politician,  can  as 
little  compare  with  Cromwell  in  true  sagacity  as  he  can  in 
greatness  of  purpose.  The  greatest  of  the  Protestant  chiefs 
was  also  among  the  foremost  of  modern  statesmen.  Those 
who  look  with  immoderate  pride  on  our  distant  dominions, 
and  with  immoderate  fear  on  their  ultimate  abandonment, 
are  the  men  who  mistrust  the  true  greatness  and  strength  of 
Britain  and  its  inhabitants.  Such  may  learn  a  useful  lesson 
by  turning  to  the  position  which  England  held  in  Europe 
under  Cromwell  —  England,  without  Indian,  American,  or 
Australian  empires;  without  Gibraltar,  without  Malta,  with- 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  21 

out  Hong  Kong,  and  without  one  of  those  thousand  posts 
where  the  British  flag  now  studs  the  Pacific  and  the  Asiatic 
Oceans. 

A  few  years  of  a  great  man's  rule  raised  her  from  utter 
insignificance  and  abasement,  to  be  in  material  strength 
among  the  first,  in  moral  purpose  the  first  of  the  nations  of 
Europe,  the  leader  of  free  civilisation  and  the  destinies  of 
the  West,  the  hope  and  help  of  the  oppressed,  the  curb  of 
the  tyrant.  Trammelled  as  he  was  by  his  narrow  creed,  and 
fired  by  the  national  lust  for  maritime  aggrandisement,  the 
policy  of  the  great  Protector  abroad  tended  at  times  to 
fanaticism,  at  times  to  injustice;  but  into  one  error,  how- 
ever imminent,  he  never  fell.  He  never  mistook  the  truth 
that  the  Catholicism  of  France  was,  in  its  way,  no  less  pro- 
gressive than  the  Protestantism  of  England;  that  the  true 
ends  of  both  countries  could  not  be  served  by  opposition; 
that  their  cordial  union  was  essential  to  the  security  and 
welfare  of  Europe.  As  Richelieu  had  continued  the  policy 
of  Henry  in  France,  Cromwell  recalled  to  life  the  policy  of 
Elizabeth  in  England;  and  the  lives  of  the  two  wisest  of  the 
modern  rulers  of  England,  and  the  two  wisest  who,  in  modern 
times,  have  ruled  France,  thus  fall  in  their  main  notes  into 
perfect  harmony  and  natural  sequence. 

We  come  now  to  the  disastrous  epoch  when  all  union 
was  destroyed  by  the  fatal  influences  which  had  long 
been  gathering  within  and  around  the  doomed  monarchy  of 
France. 

The  latter  portion  of  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.,  as  the 
pacific  influence  of  the  great  Colbert  declines,  brings  us  to 
this  disastrous  change.  It  is  no  less  than  the  contradiction 
of  the  policy  which  the  great  men  of  France  had  upheld  for 
a  century,  and  the  annihilation  of  her  well-earned  place  and 
influence.     The  later  years  of  the  Grand  Monarque  form 


2  2  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

just  that  period  of  her  history  in  which  France  is  the  farthest 
from  the  true  political  leadership  of  Europe,  at  the  lowest 
point  of  her  national  greatness.  Spurred  on  by  his  own 
arrogance  and  by  intriguing  bigots,  the  king,  whose  duty  it 
was,  and  whose  pride  it  had  once  been,  to  follow  the  steps 
of  Henry  IV.  and  Sully,  of  Richelieu,  Mazarin,  and  Colbert, 
passed  over  with  his  whole  force  to  the  enemy;  called  round 
himself  the  retrograde  powers  which  it  had  been  the  glory 
of  his  throne  to  have  curbed,  and  used  the  influence  which, 
to  protect  Europe  from  oppression,  had  been  conceded  to 
France,  in  the  very  work  of  making  France  the  oppressor  of 
Europe. 

South  Germany  practically  passed  over  to  the  side  of 
freedom,  and  France  inherited  and  extended  the  sinister 
traditions  of  Spain.  Dazzled  by  the  power  which  his  prede- 
cessors had  won  in  the  cause  of  progress,  he  turned  its 
forces  to  the  cause  of  repression.  For  Europe  nothing  was 
left  but  signal  retribution  on  the  apostate  dynasty;  and  the 
heroic  resolution  of  the  great  Dutch  chief,  in  whom  lived 
again  the  antagonist  of  Philip,  and  the  daring  genius  of 
Marlborough,  gave  us  the  few  amongst  our  triumphs  over 
France  to  which  Englishmen  can  look  back  with  unmixed 
pride. 

The  true  headship  of  Europe,  moral  and  intellectual, 
which  the  character  and  genius  of  Elizabeth  and  of  Crom- 
well for  a  season  had  twice  before  given  her,  passed  over  for 
a  season  distinctly  to  England.  During  the  whole  of  the 
century  preceding  the  Revolution,  the  movement  of  Europe 
is  speculative,  religious,  industrial,  and  social,  rather  than 
political.  Political  action  is  feeble  and  confused,  and  but 
one  great  character  occupies  the  field.  Yet  whilst  it  is  plain 
that  England  bore  a  large,  at  times  the  largest,  share  in  the 
scientific  and  industrial  movement,  in  the  political  sphere  she 


ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE  23 

no  less  manifestly  possessed  the  casting  vote,  the  reserve 
force,  the  ultimate  appeal  of  Europe. 

During  the  period  of  ignoble  intrigue  which  intervenes 
between  the  peace  of  Utrecht  and  the  French  revolution,  it 
would  be  useless  to  look  for  any  high,  or  indeed  any  settled, 
political  purpose.  In  the  collapse  of  all  political  aims  and 
convictions,  the  relations  of  states  are  reduced  to  a  mere 
struggle  for  material  advantages,  on  the  side  of  England  to 
a  blind  and  profligate  struggle  for  maritime  ascendency  and 
colonial  empire.  This  much,  however,  is  clear.  The  criminal 
extravagance  of  Louis  XIV.  once  bitterly  avenged,  France 
tends  feebly  to  recover  her  natural  ground ;  and  the  English 
and  the  French  statesmen,  or  rather  the  feeble  diplomatists 
of  the  day,  again  tend  towards  a  real  alliance,  watchful  and 
broken  as  it  was.  Walpole  indeed  —  a  statesman  whose 
sagacious  zeal  for  the  general  welfare  of  England  outweighs 
the  corrupt  means  with  which  he  bent  a  corrupt  aristocracy 
into  reason  —  succeeded  during  the  long  years  in  which  he 
governed  England  in  maintaining  unbroken  a  cordial  alliance 
with  France.  When  the  jealousy  of  a  worthless  cabal  forced 
him  to  surrender,  first  his  principles  and  shortly  afterwards 
his  power,  it  was  Spain,  not  France,  which  was  the  object  of 
the  national  antipathy,  or  rather  of  the  national  cupidity. 

The  triple  alliance,  the  quadruple  alliance,  both  equally 
point  to  the  fact  that,  though  the  old  European  parties  are 
almost  extinguished,  the  tradition  of  England  and  France  as 
allies  against  the  reactionary  powers  was  not  wholly  for- 
gotten. It  is  even  some  compensation  to  France  for  the 
humiliation  of  enduring  such  rulers  as  the  Regent,  Dubois, 
and  Fleury,  that  they  had  the  good  sense  to  cling  fast  to  this 
principle ;  so  that  their  ignoble  scheming  was  far  less  injurious 
to  their  country  than  that  of  the  ambitious  bigots  who  suc- 
ceeded them.     Unhappily  the  direction  of  France  passed 


24  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

into  the  hands  of  men  who,  to  corruption  hardly  less  than 
theirs  and  with  far  inferior  vigour,  added  the  retrograde 
ambition  of  Louis  XIV.  France  again,  under  the  guidance 
of  incorrigible  fanatics  or  the  creatures  of  royal  debauchery, 
is  seen  to  pass  to  the  side  of  the  oft -stricken  House  of  Austria 
and  the  Bourbons  of  Spain.  Aghast  at  the  sight  of  the  new 
Prussia,  which  by  a  happy  return  to  her  traditionary  policy 
France  had  assisted  to  found,  the  blind  successors  of  Riche- 
lieu joined  in  the  ill-starred  coalition  to  crush  the  only 
modern  king  who  was  worthy  to  be  his  peer. 

England,  in  the  main,  corrects  the  balance  which  the 
wretched  incapacity  of  French  policy  is  continually  un- 
settling. In  the  main  her  action  in  Europe,  always  more 
pacific  than  those  of  the  other  states,  though  for  causes 
which  do  her  small  honour,  tends  in  Europe  to  the  side  of 
order,  freedom,  and  national  independence.  Beyond  the 
limits  of  the  Western  system,  it  is  true,  her  policy  is  one 
long  and  dark  story  of  colonial  aggression  and  commercial 
rapacity.  But  within  it  she  maintains  the  part  which,  with 
the  superior  advantage  of  her  position,  France  had  in  the 
previous  century  more  systematically  supported.  She  resists 
the  reactionary  ambition  of  Spain;  she  steadily  opposes  all 
further  extension  of  the  House  of  Austria ;  she  cultivates  the 
alliance,  where  it  is  possible,  of  France ;  she  is  favourable  to, 
but  watchful  of,  the  rise  of  Prussia;  she  interferes  to  prevent 
the  premature  and  selfish  dismemberment  of  Austria  herself; 
she  turns  again  to  prevent  the  tyrannical  attempt  at  the  dis- 
memberment of  Prussia.  In  every  treaty  and  almost  every 
alliance  her  might  is  felt;  in  the  main  it  is  exerted  in  the 
interests  of  European  progress,  her  deeper  energies  and 
thoughts  being  concentrated  upon  the  task  of  founding  her 
colonial  empire. 

It  is  a  policy  which,  had  it  been  followed  consistently  by 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  25 

free  statesmen  and  not  by  successions  of  parliamentary  parti- 
sans, might  have  been  accounted  almost  wise;  and  had  it 
been  less  deeply  vitiated  by  the  lust  of  mercantile  aggrandise- 
ment, might  almost  have  been  remembered  as  honourable. 
Illumined  now  by  the  sterling  sense  of  Walpole,  now  by  the 
grand  but  over-weening  character  of  Chatham,  now  by  the 
heroism  of  Rodney  and  Wolfe,  —  with  all  its  vices  and  its 
virtues,  it  was  the  policy  of  an  aristocracy  which,  whilst 
offering  to  the  middle  classes  as  the  price  of  rule  the  plunder 
of  the  seas  and  of  the  East,  was  not  wholly  incapable  of 
directing  the  action  of  a  free  and  progressive  people.  Un- 
stable and  personal  as  that  policy  was,  and  at  times  fright- 
fully unscrupulous,  it  was  frequently  betrayed  into  hostility 
with  France;  but  no  reasonable  student  of  history  can  judge 
it  when  taken  in  the  main  as  anything  but  the  feeble  repro- 
duction of  the  policy  of  our  greater  statesmen,  —  the  policy 
of  upholding  the  course  of  liberty  and  national  independence 
in  Europe  against  the  retrograde  powers  and  against  attempts 
at  violent  aggression.  Assuredly  no  candid  mind  can  judge 
it  (again  when  looked  at  broadly  as  a  whole)  as  a  policy  of 
settled  antagonism  to  France,  as  based  on  any  deep  difference 
of  principle  or  any  inveterate  antipathy  of  race. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  at  the  moment  of  the  great 
crisis,  —  the  long-gathering  revolution  of  Europe.  The 
whole  fabric  of  the  degenerate  monarchy  of  France,  with 
the  spiritual  and  temporal  forces  which  had  gathered  round 
it,  was  overturned;  and  the  wrongs  which  the  Louises  and 
their  courtiers  had  done  to  France,  to  peace,  to  freedom,  and 
to  reason  were  fiercely  avenged.  The  violence  of  the  crisis 
was  extreme;  but  it  was  clear  then,  and  it  grows  ever  clearer 
to  us  now,  that  amidst  it  France  was  working  out  the  legiti- 
mate issue  of  her  whole  past  and  entering  on  the  system  of 
the  future.     Again,  and  now  in  a  far  more  emphatic  manner, 


26  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  genius  of  French  civilisation  carried  her  to  the  head  of 
the  European  movement;  and  this  time  it  was  a  headship 
at  once  political,  social,  and  intellectual.  She  had  to  call 
into  life  and  to  sustain  the  principle  of  rule  in  accordance 
with  national  necessities,  which  has  remodelled,  and  is  still 
remodelling,  the  state  system  of  Europe;  she  had  the  yet 
more  difficult  and  the  longer  task  of  reconstructing  society 
on  the  basis  of  organised  labour;  she  had  the  leading  part 
in  the  most  arduous  task  of  all,  that  which  both  precedes  and 
must  systemise  the  rest,  —  the  task  of  reducing  into  practice 
the  new  philosophy  of  society,  which  the  progress  of  Euro- 
pean thought  had  evolved;  she  had  undertaken  to  lead  the 
way  towards  the  regeneration  of  the  political  doctrines,  of 
the  national  unity,  of  the  social  system,  —  the  law,  the  ad- 
ministration, the  industry,  and  the  religion  of  Europe.  The 
effort  was  made  most  imperfectly  and  most  stormily,  with 
the  aid  of  the  leading  minds  and  characters  of  Europe  con- 
sciously co-operating  for  a  century,  in  spite  of  organised 
opposition  without  and  chaotic  confusion  within;  and  Eu- 
rope still  owes  to  her  a  debt  of  gratitude  for  the  sacrifices  and 
agonies  she  endured  in  the  spasms  of  this  momentous  birth. 
The  true  nature  of  this  great  movement,  and  the  part 
which  England  might  have  played  in  it,  was  seen  by  the 
greater  spirits,  and  by  the  national  instinct  in  this  country 
and  elsewhere,  and  felt  even  by  the  abler  section  of  our 
governing  aristocracy.  Unfortunately  for  England  and  for 
the  world,  the  voice  of  Fox  and  Macintosh  was  drowned  by 
the  selfish  terrors  of  the  dominant  majority,  and  the  whole 
force  of  England  was  thrown  into  the  reactionary  scale. 
The  tragic  pathos  of  Burke  and  the  lofty  resolution  of  Pitt, 
in  doing  battle  for  the  ancient  order,  almost  blind  us  yet  to 
the  fatal  badness  of  their  cause.  Many  a  doomed  system 
has  given  a  sort  of  melancholy  grandeur  to  its  last  defenders. 


ENGLAND   AND    FRANCE  27 

But  neither  the  character  nor  the  genius  of  Cicero,  of  Pope 
Sixtus,  of  Parma,  or  of  Strafford  can  make  us  forget  that 
their  success  would  have  arrested  the  progress  of  mankind. 

After  the  mean  and  hesitating  policy  of  preceding  states- 
men, there  is  something  of  at  least  grand  fanaticism  in  the 
furious  attack  of  England  on  revolutionary  France,  and  un- 
questionably much  that  is  heroic  in  the  latter  period,  when 
the  war  had  become  one  of  liberty  and  of  defence.  The 
English  aristocracy  committed  the  blunder  and  the  crime 
which  had  ruined  the  monarchy  of  France,  with  even  less 
ground  of  excuse  and  (to  Europe)  far  more  disastrous  result. 
At  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  ambition  of  Louis 
XIV.  had  attempted  to  use  the  position  which  the  history  of 
his  country  had  given  him  in  the  work  of  destroying  that 
position  and  undoing  that  history.  At  the  close  of  the  eigh- 
teenth the  panic  of  the  governing  class  of  England  turned 
the  force  which,  in  the  name  of  industry,  progress,  peace, 
and  freedom,  they  were  permitted  to  direct,  to  the  task  of 
crushing  out  a  new  phase  of  all  of  these  at  once.  Doubtless 
it  was  a  revolution,  and  a  portentous  one  —  one  destined  to 
modify  their  whole  position  and  power  —  which  they  were 
called  upon  to  welcome.  But  they  were  themselves  the  prod- 
uct of  a  successful  revolution,  and  were  forced  by  every 
principle  they  asserted  to  carry  it  to  its  natural  conclusion. 
Deliberately,  at  the  most  critical  moment  of  modern  history, 
they  chose  the  wrong  cause;  and  again,  of  the  two  nations 
the  leaders  of  civilisation,  one  passed  over  with  its  whole 
force  to  the  side  of  the  enemy. 

That  the  official  course  of  English  policy  was  on  the 
wrong  side,  has  been  demonstrated  by  events.  Temporarily, 
outwardly,  its  resistance  was  successful.  It  succeeded  in  re- 
establishing the  ancient  monarchy;  it  succeeded  in  crushing 
and  almost  in  proscribing  the  new  spirit.     In  the  blind  settle- 


28  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

ment  known  as  the  Treaties  of  Vienna  they  thought  to 
establish  the  old  order  permanently.  Every  act  of  that 
settlement  has  been  undone  and  is  undoing  before  our  eyes. 
The  successors  of  the  English  reactionaries  are  now  leagued 
with  the  successors  of  the  revolutionary  chief  to  carry  out  the 
principles  which  that  revolution  inaugurated.  It  is  in  vain 
now  to  point  to  the  fatal  and  frightful  extravagances  which 
accompanied  the  actual  crisis.  The  revolution  was  carried 
out  under  conditions  so  adverse  and  special  that  no  judg- 
ment can  be  passed  as  to  how  far  these  extravagances  were 
inherent  in  it  or  were  induced  by  circumstances.  The 
French  nation  were  forced  to  carry  out  the  greatest  and 
most  arduous  of  all  social  changes  under  foreign  aggression 
more  formidable  than  any  modern  people  has  endured. 
France,  in  a  word,  was  martyred  by  and  for  her  sister 
nations. 

To  the  careful  student  of  the  Revolution,  the  spasms  of 
the  Reign  of  Terror  keep  cadence,  beat  for  beat,  with  the 
tramp  of  the  foreign  invaders.  The  culminating  agony  of 
the  struggle  within  coincides  almost  to  a  few  days  with  the 
height  of  the  danger  from  without.  As  Europe  advances  in 
arms,  the  murders  in  the  prisons  begin ;  as  the  coalition 
thunders  forth  its  threats,  the  delirium  is  at  its  height;  as 
the  defeated  invaders  retreat,  the  guillotine  descends. 

It  is  in  vain  also  now  to  pretend  that  the  Coalition  itself 
was  a  work  of  defence.  It  is  a  pretext  too  shallow  to  be  now 
repeated  that  France  in  the  hour  of  her  extreme  prostration, 
—  utterly  disorganised,  without  an  army  or  a  navy,  govern- 
ment or  supplies ;  without  credit,  money,  or  resources,  — 
was  becoming  a  danger  to  Europe,  was  meditating  general 
aggression  or  dominion.  The  trope  of  her  great  leader, 
Danton,  is  as  true  as  it  is  wild.  France  only  took  up  the 
gage  of  battle  that  was  hurled  at  her,  and  flung  down  before 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  29 

Europe  the  head  of  a  king.  But  the  attack  on  France  was 
no  more  one  of  legitimate  defence  than  the  attack  of  the 
northern  autocrats  on  Poland  was  defensive.  In  both  cases 
it  was  a  conspiracy  at  once  to  crush  out  a  freedom  which 
they  dreaded,  and  to  divide  the  spoil  which  they  coveted. 
Never  had  people  been  so  cruelly  and  wantonly  bested. 
Having  in  pursuit  of  a  dominant  idea  disarmed  herself  and 
reduced  herself  almost  to  helplessness,  with  scarcely  a  trained 
soldier  under  her  standards  or  a  general  of  division  who 
could  be  trusted,  France  found  herself  the  object  of  attack 
from  a  coalition  of  almost  every  state  in  Europe,  with  four 
or  five  armies  of  as  many  Powers  upon  her  soil,  her  officials 
corrupted,  her  provinces  stirred  into  revolt,  her  ports  blockaded, 
her  commerce  destroyed,  her  fortresses  razed,  her  soil  honey- 
combed with  foreign  conspiracies,  her  name,  her  national 
character,  government,  institutions,  and  principles  held  up 
to  violent  invective  from  every  corner  of  Europe,  half  a 
million  of  men  in  arms  with  the  avowed  object  of  annihilat- 
ing her  as  a  nation,  and  fomenting  with  rancorous  energy 
every  form  of  civic  confusion,  discord,  and  treachery. 

And  this  was  done  in  the  name  of  a  cause  which  the  right 
hand  of  that  Coalition  has  utterly  discarded.  Of  late  years, 
in  the  eyes  of  certain  schools,  England  has  been  even  more 
identified  with  the  leading  principles  of  this  great  change 
than  France  herself.  Mistaken  as  this  is,  it  serves  to  show 
how  completely  England  has  abandoned  the  Coalition. 
With  or  without  the  aid  of  England,  as  a  fact  the  spirit  of 
the  Revolution,  in  a  moral  sense,  has  triumphed.  The 
principle  that  the  permanent  good  of  the  entire  people  is 
paramount;  that  nations  have  no  solid  basis  except  as  they 
represent  the  wants  and  desires  of  an  aggregate  race;  that 
all  rule  is  tyrannical  which  is  alien  to  the  popular  will;  that 
national  greatness  is  based  on  industrial  and  not  on  militarv 


30  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

activity;  that  public  life  must  come  to  embrace  all  members 
of  the  nation,  educated,  trained,  and  organised  for  this  end; 
that  by  steady  but  incessant  steps  the  whole  of  our  modern 
institutions,  European,  national,  and  social,  must  be  re- 
modelled upon  the  new  basis,  —  such  are  the  principles 
which  are  now  the  very  maxims  of  all  who  believe  at  once  in 
progress  and  in  order,  whether  in  France  or  England,  in  any 
part  of  civilised  Europe;  and  these  are  at  bottom  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Revolution.  Until  these  principles  are  frankly 
accepted  by  those  who  rule  this  country,  and  until  they  still 
further  acknowledge  that  with  France  lies  their  initiation 
and  their  earliest  and  fullest  development,  the  action  of 
England  in  Europe  must  remain  vacillating,  inexplicable, 
and  neutral. 

This  spirit  has  already  deeply  penetrated  the  brain  and 
the  conscience  of  this  country;  but  its  cordial  adoption  by 
any  political  party  will  at  once  make  that  party  the  natural 
directors  of  its  policy.  The  traditional  Whig  statesmen 
have  just  courage  enough  to  repudiate  the  language  of  the 
Coalition,  but  not  enough  to  welcome  the  vital  strength  of  the 
Revolution.  All  who  refuse  this  are  disqualified  at  once  for 
any  useful  foreign  policy.  But  the  moment  that  those  who 
rule  here  have  determined  to  adopt  it,  the  relations  of  England 
and  France  at  once  become  consistent,  intelligible,  and 
cordial.  Their  historical  attitude  is  resumed;  they  again 
pursue  their  common  work  with  the  same  spirit,  but  in  dif- 
ferent modes  —  the  common  work  with  which  the  greater 
rulers  of  each  country  are  closely  identified ;  the  work  which 
for  three  centuries  they  have  carried  on  without  serious 
interruption,  except  on  the  two  occasions  when  the  arrogance 
of  Louis  and  the  conservatism  of  Pitt  drove  their  respective 
people  headlong  on  the  path  of  evil. 

The  monstrous   ambition  of    Napoleon  was  the  sinister 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  3 1 

result  of  the  Coalition  wars.  And  grievously  have  France 
and  Europe  paid  the  penalty.  England  took  a  foremost 
part  in  the  necessary  task  of  crushing  the  new  tyranny  of 
Napoleonic  Imperialism.  Since  the  peace  the  history  of 
the  relations  of  England  with  France  is  the  history  of  the 
renunciation  of  all  the  principles  with  which  the  Coalition 
entered  into  war.  In  a  moral  sense,  and  to  the  political 
student,  France  has  redressed  her  material  defeat  by  the 
triumph  of  her  social  ideas.  Waterloo  has  been  thrice 
avenged  by  the  victors  combining  with  the  vanquished  to 
enforce  the  principles  of  which  that  battle-field  was  once 
thought  to  be  the  grave.  Every  one  of  the  great  acts  of  the 
drama  of  European  history  has  been  a  fresh  gain  to  the 
cause  of  the  Revolution,  to  that  of  nationality,  republicanism, 
social  and  international  fraternity;  public  opinion,  justice, 
and  moral  right.  Since  the  days  of  Canning,  whether  di- 
rected by  Whig  or  Tory  politicians,  it  has  been  a  question 
only  whether  the  policy  of  England  should  welcome  these 
principles  with  greater  or  less  frankness. 

So  soon  as  the  military  ambition  of  Napoleon  and  his 
bastard  imperialism  was  crushed  and  the  bitterness  which 
its  suppression  produced  was  extinct,  the  policy  of  England 
and  France  reverted  to  its  ancient  convergence  of  purpose, 
and  both  resumed  something  of  their  natural  functions.  The 
negotiations  respecting  Poland  in  1831,  abortive  as  they  were, 
and  feeble  as  they  exhibit  the  statesmen  of  England  to  have 
been,  bring  before  us  France  again  in  her  former  position 
as  the  promoter  of  the  cause  of  freedom  and  nationality 
in  Europe,  but  as  hoping  to  succeed  in  it  only  through  the 
co-operation  of  England.  On  each  occasion  on  which  the 
undying  Polish  struggle  has  been  felt  —  in  1846,  in  1848, 
in  1855,  and  1864  —  the  same  thing  has  been  seen,  and  on 
each  occasion  with    increasing  distinctness.     Putting   aside 


32  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  miserable  squabbles  arising  out  of  extra-European  em- 
broilments and  dynastic  intrigues,  on  the  greater  questions 
of  European  politics,  the  policy  of  England  and  France  has 
tended  to  agreement  in  the  interests  of  order  and  progress. 

That  it  has  resulted  in  so  little  was  due  largely  to  the 
peculiar  timidity  of  the  politicians  who  directed  the  foreign 
policy  of  the  two  countries.  During  the  convulsion  of  1848 
the  same  causes  were  perpetually  at  work,  but  were  deprived 
of  any  practical  result  by  the  same  personal  indecision  and 
incoherence  of  aim.  The  accession  of  a  strong  hand  to  the 
policy  of  France,  coinciding  with  something  like  a  strong 
and  popular  administration  in  England,  has  for  the  first  time 
enabled  these  principles  to  bear  fruits  of  any  worth.  The 
Crimean  wrar  —  begun  by  France  mainly  for  dynastic  and 
military,  by  England  for  commercial  and  Asiatic,  ends  — 
slowly  became,  under  the  forming  principle  of  public  opinion, 
and  by  sheer  force  of  the  natural  truth  of  the  relation,  a  really 
European  movement,  of  which  France  and  England  were 
at  once  the  heads  and  the  arms.  Unsatisfactory  as  much  of 
this  policy  is,  it  was  at  bottom  the  combination  of  the  West 
for  European  objects  under  its  natural  leaders. 

To  the  perplexity  of  some  of  the  politicians  engaged,  the 
closing  phase  of  this  war,  in  the  Conference  of  Paris,  showed 
a  moral  dignity  and  foresight  which  for  the  first  time  realised 
in  outline  the  future  congresses  and  settlements  of  the  West. 
The  regeneration  of  Italy,  the  natural  sequence  of  the  Con- 
ference of  Paris — which  forms  with  it  the  bright  side  of  the 
second  empire  —  is  but  a  continuation  of  the  same  policy. 
In  spite  of  jealousies  and  caprices,  the  restoration  of  Italy 
has  been  the  work  of  England  and  of  France  together;  a 
work  to  which  Napoleon  has  given  the  initiative,  but  the  issue 
of  which  is  in  the  hands  of  the  entire  English  and  the  entire 
French  nation.     In  the  Polish  and  Danish  wars,  in  nearly 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE 


33 


every  European  question  which  arises,  the  same  principles 
are  apparent.  Now,  as  so  often  before,  the  nations  seem 
to  force  this  part  spontaneously  on  the  two  heads  of  the 
Western  system.  That  it  hitherto  has  had  results  so  small  is 
due  to  the  extreme  difficulty  of  the  situation  and  to  the  per- 
sonal prejudices  of  the  politicians.  To  Napoleon  III.  it 
must  be  conceded  that  he  has  recognised  this  principle  more 
steadily  than  any  statesman  in  England  or  in  France.  His 
rule,  for  the  first  time  in  recent  history,  brought  it  to  efficient 
results,  and  each  year  of  it  has  strengthened  and  illustrated 
the  principle.  His  strong  and  fixed  desire  for  a  European 
congress  is  but  one  form  of  it ;  a  desire  which  must  one  day 
be  realised.  In  the  meantime  each  year  teems  with  proofs 
that  the  set  of  all  public  opinion  in  Europe  and  of  general 
events  is  towards  an  active  combination  between  England 
and  France  to  realise  without  convulsion  the  necessary 
changes  in  its  condition. 

Ill 

In  the  association  of  nations  it  requires  little  reasoning 
to  show  that  England  and  France  hold  a  preponderating 
place.  By  their  material  force,  by  their  industrial  greatness, 
by  their  national  cohesion  and  energy,  no  less  than  by  their 
traditions  and  their  prestige,  they  are  marked  out  as  the 
twin  chiefs  of  the  European  system.  Great  promise  in  the 
future  is  found  in  other  nations  and  races.  As  great  and 
even  greater  elements  of  moral  or  intellectual  eminence 
belong  to  other  people;  but  no  reasonable  mind  can  doubt 
that,  for  all  the  practical  ends  of  actual  politics,  England  and 
France  have  for  the  moment  a  distinct  pre-eminence  in 
Europe.  In  that  union  of  innate  strength,  material  resources, 
moral  prestige,  historical  renown,  and  popular  enlightenment 


34  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

which  political  leadership  in  these  days  implies,  no  other  state 
at  present  can  practically  compare  with  these  two  (written 
in  1864). 

On  every  ground  Russia  can  make  no  fair  claim  to  such 
a  place.  As  a  power  semi-oriental  and  semi-civilised  she 
is  clearly  outside  the  pale  of  our  modern  political  life.  A 
nation  still  struggling  in  the  throes  of  serfdom,  and  to  the 
very  existence  of  which  a  military  autocracy  seems  essential, 
can  interfere  in  the  movement  of  our  political  activity  to 
nothing  but  a  sinister  end.  The  heterogeneous  soldiery  of 
Prussia  and  Austria  point  to  the  bifurcation  of  Germany  as 
a  political  force.  Besides  these,  no  other  Power  in  Europe 
can  pretend  to  the  material  and  moral  weight  which  a  lead- 
ing Power  must  combine.  On  the  other  hand,  the  influence 
exercised  both  by  England  and  by  France  in  their  respective 
spheres  is  very  real  and  definite.  The  European  state 
system  itself  is  shaken  by  several  conflicting  principles, 
which  complicate  the  relations  of  its  members  and  often 
neutralise  the  action  of  the  whole. 

Catholicism  and  Protestantism,  with  much  diminished 
vigour,  still  control  and  agitate  it  on  periodical  occasions. 
The  great  religious  struggle  is  being  gradually  lost  in  the 
new  struggle  of  established  Christianity  against  philosophy 
and  science.  But  the  antagonism  of  the  Catholic  and  the 
Protestant  interests,  which  in  the  minor  questions  of  Euro- 
pean politics  —  in  the  development  of  Belgium,  Scandinavia, 
Switzerland,  and  Spain  —  is  constantly  but  irregularly  at 
work,  rises  occasionally,  as  in  the  Polish  contest,  into  a 
feature  of  extreme  importance.  It  assumes  even  deeper 
significance  in  the  whole  Italian  question  and  that  of  Papal 
independence,  —  a  question  which  underlies  and  will  out- 
last any  temporary  solution  of  the  military  occupation  of 
Rome. 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  35 

An  antagonism  somewhat  similar  in  its  extent,  somewhat 
deeper  in  its  effects,  though  far  less  defined,  is  that  division 
of  race  into  the  great  classes  of  the  Latin  and  the  Teutonic. 
But  easily  as  the  feeling  of  race  disappears  or  is  neutralised 
under  strong  pressure,  its  subtle  and  persistent  influence, 
so  closely  connected  with  every  element  of  civilisation,  pro- 
duces a  real  antagonism,  or  rather  co-ordination,  amongst 
the  Powers  of  Europe.  No  practical  statesman  can  afford 
to  underestimate  its  force,  for  it  expresses  real  and  profound 
varieties  of  national  character.  And  it  would  be  an  idle 
dream  to  suppose  that  a  Latin  and  a  Teutonic  people  will 
for  ages  exhibit  the  same  affinity  as  that  which  exists  between 
two  peoples  of  the  same  origin.  Connected  with  the  religious 
and  ethnological,  and  nearly  identical  in  area,  is  another 
dualism  —  that  between  the  peoples  who  have  modified  and 
retained  the  feudal  organisation  of  society  and  those  who 
have  transformed  it  into  a  new  social  system;  where  the 
hierarchy  of  birth  and  office  is  in  full  ascendency,  as  in  Ger- 
many, or  under  legal  and  constitutional  restrictions,  as  in 
England ;  and  where  it  has  given  place  totally,  as  in  France, 
partially,  as  in  Spain  and  Italy,  to  social  equality  and  military 
autocracy. 

Akin  to  this  is  the  contrast  between  the  principles  of 
hereditary  and  of  republican  government,  between  nations 
with  whom  the  aristocratic  and  monarchic  system  is  in  full 
vitality,  as  in  Germany  and  England,  and  those  with  whom, 
as  in  France,  the  popular  will  reigns  supreme,  more  or  less 
identified  with  an  individual  dictator.  There  is,  again,  the 
struggle  between  industrialism  and  militarism;  between 
a  localised  and  a  centralised  form  of  administration ;  between 
parliamentary  and  bureaucratic  institutions.  All  of  these 
are  principles  which  combine  to  form  something  like  a  dual 
system  in  the  Western  group  of  nations,  which  divide  them, 


36  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

more  or  less  equally,  and  with  many  cross-divisions,  into 
two  camps.  They  are  principles,  moreover,  which  subdivide 
each  nation  within  itself,  and  separate  them  into  rival  and 
counterbalancing  parties. 

At  the  head  of  these  two  great  groups  of  nations  in  Europe, 
of  these  two  principles  which  divide  each  nation,  stand 
respectively  England  and  France.  One  or  other  of  them 
is  the  fair  representative  and  type  of  every  one  of  these  ele- 
ments of  European  society,  though  neither  expresses  them 
in  a  quite  exclusive  form.  Round  England  centre  the  sym- 
pathies of  all  in  Europe  that  is  Teutonic,  Protestant,  con- 
servative, parliamentary,  and  commercial.  France,  in  like 
manner,  is  the  centre  of  the  Latin,  the  Catholic,  the  democratic, 
the  centralised,  and  the  revolutionary  element.  The  action 
of  England  and  of  France  is  so  closely  identified  with  these 
respective  principles  that  neither  Power  alone  can  give  any 
continuous  support  to  a  movement  identified  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  other  party. 

Over  the  smaller  seaboard  peoples  of  Europe  the  influence 
of  England  is  in  the  ascendant.  Over  Denmark,  Holland, 
Scandinavia,  over  Portugal  and  Turkey,  the  prestige  of 
England  reigns  as  in  a  congenial  soil.  This  is  the  result  of 
an  obvious  identity  of  interest  or  pursuit,  and  the  fact  that 
these  smaller  Powers  are  in  an  especial  manner  brought 
face  to  face  with  her  material  strength  and  maritime  dominion. 
Scandinavia,  Holland,  and  North  Germany  see  in  her  the 
principal  and  most  systematically  Protestant  Power.  Prussia, 
Holland,  and  Italy  necessarily  look  towards  her  for  the  type 
of  those  parliamentary  and  constitutional  systems  which 
they  seem  bent  on  developing  for  themselves.  It  is  part  of 
the  traditions  of  the  Austrian  crown  that  it  owes  its  very 
existence  to  England ;  and  hateful  to  our  ears  as  is  the  aristo- 
cratic dogma  of  our  "ancient  alliance"  with  Austria,  to  her, 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  37 

in  spite  of  her  irritation,  it  is  a  grim  necessity  to  cling  to  and 
to  uphold.  For  to  England  turn  the  eyes  of  all  who  dread 
violent  change,  as  well  as  of  all  who  apprehend  aggression. 
All  feel  that  England  is  the  only  one  of  the  great  Powers  of 
Europe  who  can  gain  nothing  and  who  will  not  profit  by 
dynastic  and  territorial  revolution  on  the  Continent. 

England  (which  in  the  East  is  the  disturber  of  peace  and 
rest)  in  Europe  is  naturally  identified  with  commerce,  in- 
dustry, and  peace.  Her  government  again,  as  the  only 
government  of  Europe  which  has  never  suffered  an  external 
overthrow,  and  for  two  centuries  has  suffered  no  approach 
to  an  internal  convulsion,  is  the  great  symbol  of  stability  in 
the  West.  Her  crown  —  by  far  the  oldest  and  most  illustrious 
of  all  the  crowns  of  Europe,  which  was  a  great  European 
monarchy  at  a  time  when  Hapsburgs  and  Brandenburgs, 
Romanoffs  and  Dukes  of  Savoy,  were  robber  chiefs;  when 
Italy  was  a  network  of  republics,  Germany  a  collection  of 
baronies,  and  Spain  was  occupied  by  Moors  —  is  now, 
since  the  extinction  of  the  shadow  of  the  Roman  Empire 
and  the  fall  of  the  House  of  Capet,  the  great  centre  of  all 
the  historical  traditions.  In  a  word,  England  is  felt  to  rep- 
resent and  to  support  upon  the  Continent  the  sentiment 
of  order,  national  stability,  recognised  law,  and  historical 
permanence,  of  personal  freedom,  of  free  speech,  of  equal 
justice,  of  administrative  independence,  the  expansion  of  in- 
dustry, free  trade,  and  commercial  intercourse,  the  mainte- 
nance of  ancient  rights  and  resistence  to  wanton  change,  the 
independence  of  the  smallest  member  of  the  European  family 
of  nations.  It  is  a  leading  and  a  noble  part  that  she  plays 
amongst  them;  though  the  least  reflection  will  show  that  it  is 
but  one  side  of  the  European  movement,  but  one  element  of 
our  modern  civilisation,  of  which  she  is  the  recognised  organ, 
and  that  one  not  the  most  characteristic. 


38  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

We  turn  now  to  France,  which  in  the  other  great  side  of 
the  European  movement  possesses  a  still  more  unquestioned 
predominance.  She  is  the  recognised  head  of  the  Latin 
race,  between  the  members  of  which,  for  several  reasons, 
historical  as  well  as  political,  there  is  a  much  stronger  bond 
than  exists  between  nations  of  Teutonic  origin.  She  is  still 
(1866)  the  head  of  Catholicism,  partly  as  being  by  far  the 
most  powerful  of  the  Catholic  Powers,  partly  because  she 
holds  the  Papacy  in  her  hand.  Quite  apart  from  the  actual 
muster-roll  of  her  armies,  which  may  vary  with  political 
circumstances  and  parties,  she  is  at  present  the  first  military 
power  of  the  Continent.  None  contest  her  claim  to  be  the 
second  naval  power  in  Europe,  not  so  much  from  the  number 
and  equipment  of  her  ships  of  war,  her  Gloires  and  her 
Cherbourgs,  but  from  the  high  aptitude  of  her  sons  for 
scientific  warfare  whether  on  land  or  sea,  the  extent  of  her 
coasts,  the  excellence  of  her  ports,  her  commercial  activity, 
and  her  ancient  maritime  traditions.  In  industrial  develop- 
ment, in  manufacturing  energy,  the  French  people  are  second 
only  to  ourselves,  and  if  organisation  and  art  are  regarded 
in  industry,  quite  our  equals.  All  these  are,  it  is  true,  but 
minor  requisites  of  national  greatness,  but  they  are  indis- 
pensable, and  without  them  no  nation  can  pretend,  in  our 
present  state  of  opinion,  to  occupy  a  prominent  rank. 

The  great  distinctive  feature  of  France  as  a  nation  is, 
however,  the  very  simple  one  of  her  geographical  position. 
Her  border  closely  abuts  on  at  least  seven  of  the  European 
states.  In  the  system  of  Western  Europe  she  distinctly 
occupies  the  centre,  and  is  the  only  Power  in  close  local 
connection  with  England.  Local  connection,  of  course, 
is  of  great  importance  in  governing  international  relations. 
No  one  who  reflects  on  the  innumerable  channels  through 
which  movements,  social,  political,  and  literary,  radiate  from 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  39 

Paris  throughout  Europe,  can  fail  to  recognise  the  importance 
of  occupying  this  geographical  centre.  Let  us  conceive  the 
relative  weight  of  an  insurrection  or  a  change  of  government 
in  Paris  and  in  any  other  capital  in  Europe.  There  is  but 
one  city  of  Europe  towards  which  gravitate  the  cultivated 
and  thoughtful  of  every  nation,  in  the  movements,  ideas,  arts, 
and  habits  of  which  all  take  a  greater  or  a  less  interest. 
Let  us  compare  the  relative  degree  of  publicity  and  value 
which  popularly  attaches  to  any  political  scheme,  any  social, 
historical,  or  political  theory  propounded  in  Paris,  and  one 
propounded  in  any  existing  city. 

The  Parisian  press,  publicists,  and  jurists  alone  can  be 
called  common  to  Europe.  The  undisputed  acceptance  of  the 
French  language  as  the  common  political  and  international 
medium  is,  if  we  give  its  true  place  to  language,  almost  by 
itself  decisive.  Let  Frenchmen  assert  a  statement,  however 
contrary  to  fact;  promulgate  a  social  system,  however  chi- 
merical; or  be  suspected  of  a  design,  however  extravagant, 
all  for  a  time  will  hold  their  ground  in  the  mind  of  Europe 
with  vitality  out  of  proportion  to  their  merit.  It  does  not 
advance  the  question  to  insist  that  all  this  is  but  to  the  dis- 
credit of  the  other  peoples  of  Europe;  that  they  should 
travel  to  other  cities,  use  some  other  language,  read  some 
other  writers,  study  other  arts,  ideas,  and  movements  than 
those  of  France.  All  we  are  now  concerned  with  is  the  fact. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  taking  one  people  with  another  and  one 
subject  with  another,  the  bulk  of  the  people  of  Europe  do 
turn  in  the  questions  of  social  life  in  an  especial  manner  to 
France.  However  various  the  causes,  trivial  or  irrational  as 
they  may  be,  if  politically  and  morally  Europe  can  be  said  to 
be  one  whole,  and  if  one  whole,  to  have  a  common  centre, 
the  instinct  of  the  greater  number  points  for  that  centre  to 
Paris. 


40  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

This  is  precisely  one  of  those  questions  most  likely  to  be 
embarrassed  by  strong  prejudice,  and  on  which,  from  na- 
tional feeling  and  from  its  own  great  complexity,  it  is  most 
difficult  to  preserve  a  judicial  fairness  of  mind.  But  no 
political  writer  would  be  worthy  of  the  name  who  had  not 
thoroughly  weighed  it  with  conscientious  and  patient  dis- 
crimination. Let  us  try  to  correct  any  personal  predilection 
and  antipathy  by  the  calm  test  of  historical  fact,  and  see  if 
there  be  anything  in  the  ancient  position  of  France  to  explain 
or  support  her  modern  pretensions.  A  very  simple  question 
seems  crucial.  Can  it  be  said  that  if  the  history  of  Europe 
since  the  fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  be  surveyed  as  a  whole, 
this  history  would  be  so  completely  eviscerated  by  the  loss 
of  all  mention  of  any  other  European  country  as  it  would 
be  by  the  loss  of  that  of  France?  Once  blot  France  out  of 
the  historical  map,  and  the  history  of  Europe  would  become 
unintelligible.  A  slight  effort  of  the  imagination  may  assist 
us  to  understand  the  case;  and  if  we  can  conceive  as  effaced 
the  very  memory  of  Charlemagne,  of  the  House  of  Capet  and 
of  Bourbon,  of  the  first  Crusade,  of  Louis  IX.,  of  Louis  XL, 
of  Henry  IV.,  of  Richelieu,  Colbert,  and  Louis  XIV.,  of  the 
Convention,  the  Republic  of  '92,  and  of  the  two  Napoleons, 
we  can  estimate  the  relative  value  of  the  residuum  of  European 
history.  The  country  which  for  one  thousand  years  has 
filled  this  space  in  the  minds  of  men  must  have  gained  a 
real,  if  unrecognised,  prerogative  in  the  comitia  of  Euro- 
pean nations. 

Nor  must  another  great  peculiarity  of  France  be  over- 
looked. She  is  essentially  European.  Her  interests  and 
policy  must  necessarily  be  guided  on  European  bases.  Not 
so  exclusively  European  that  she  is  without  points  of  contact 
with  the  other  continents,  she  is  still  free  from  the  embar- 
rassment and  distraction  which  colonial  and  maritime  inter- 


ENGLAND   AND    FRANCE  4 1 

ests  introduce  into  general  questions.  The  extra-European 
interests  of  England  are  so  enormous  that  they  seldom  leave 
her  free  to  pursue  a  purely  European  policy.  Russia,  in  one 
half  of  her  vast  dominions,  is  the  mistress  of  mere  Asiatics. 
Neither  Prussia  nor  Austria  have  any  interests  beyond  their 
own  continent;  but  they  are  both  so  exclusively  continental 
and  inland,  that  it  diminishes  rather  than  increases  their 
influence  here.  France,  on  the  other  hand,  has  enough  to 
connect  her  with  transmarine  races,  but  not  enough  to  dis- 
turb her  action  at  home.  Whilst  England  and  Russia  have 
wide  maritime  and  Oriental  interests,  those  of  France  are 
strictly  continental,  European,  and  concentrated. 

Yet  another  consideration,  and  one  of  an  importance 
which  it  is  almost  impossible  to  exaggerate.  In  estimating 
the  moral  weight  and  even  the  material  strength  which  any 
nation  can  bring  to  the  great  questions  of  European  politics, 
nothing  is  more  important  than  the  greater  or  less  degree  in 
which  they  are  chargeable  with  national  oppression,  and  the 
character  for  moderation  and  unselfishness  which  they  possess. 
Let  us  read  the  protocols  of  the  Treaty  of  Paris  of  1856,  and 
contrast  the  moral  weight  of  Count  Buol  with  that  of  Count 
Cavour;  and  even  remember  the  moral  power  of  England 
at  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  which  her  unselfish,  though  mis- 
taken, policy  procured  her.  Of  the  actual  five  European 
Powers,  England  and  France  alone  are  decently  free  from 
this  fatal  weakness.  The  crimes  of  the  Russian  domination 
in  Poland,  Finland,  and  Turkey;  of  Austrian  domination 
in  Galicia,  in  Hungary,  in  Yenetia;  of  Prussian  domination 
in  Posen  and  Denmark,  identify  these  three  Powers  with 
oppression,  and  colour  all  their  action  and  their  character  in 
Europe. 

On  England  herself  the  memory  of  her  Indian  aggressions, 
subiugations,  and  revolts,  her  Asiatic  empire,  her  Chinese, 


42  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

her  Japanese,  her  perennial  colonial  wars,  her  maritime 
pretensions,  hang  as  a  dead  weight,  dragging  down  her  fame. 
There  is  but  one  modern  nation  which  never  closes  the  temple 
of  Janus,  and  that  nation  is  England.  Nor  can  an  old  man 
recall  the  period  at  which  British  soldiers  were  not  engaged 
in  some  corner  of  the  world.  We  esteem  ourselves  happy  if 
we  chance  not  to  be  engaged  in  several.  As  I  write,  English 
soldiers  are  in  the  field  in  four  distinct  wars  of  race  in  as 
many  great  divisions  of  the  globe.  To  us  a  source  of  pride 
as  well  as  a  supposed  means  of  gain,  these  ceaseless  foreign 
expeditions  damage  our  honour  in  Europe  as  much  as  they 
disturb  and  weaken  our  policy. 

We  have,  too,  our  special  weakness.  Blinded  by  long 
habit,  and  conscious  of  at  least  good  intentions  in  these 
latter  years,  the  English  nation  forgets  its  position  in  Ireland, 
as  that  of  a  dominant  race  still  hated  by  a  subjugated  nation, 
still  alien  in  religion,  manners,  and  traditions,  and  loaded 
by  the  memory  of  seven  centuries  of  selfish  misgovernment. 
We  jest  almost  at  the  thought  of  being  ourselves  national 
oppressors  at  home,  and  for  the  moment  our  confidence  is 
just.  But  Europe  has  not  learned  the  difference  between 
our  government  in  Ireland  now  and  our  government  as  it 
has  been  for  seven  centuries;  and  the  oppressors  of  the 
Magyar,  the  Venetian,  and  the  Pole  can  still  point  biting 
retorts  at  the  perplexed  rulers  of  the  Irish  Kelt. 

France  in  Europe  is  almost  free  from  any  similar  weakness. 
Her  occupation  of  Rome  is  a  special  and  complex  case, 
which,  with  all  its  evils,  is  yet  in  its  nature  emporary,  and  not 
in  its  form  oppressive.  Her  aggressions  and  domination  in 
Algeria  form  a  fatal  wound  in  her  side,  less  damaging  to  her 
than  our  own  Oriental  and  maritime  oppression,  because 
neither  so  incessant  nor  so  colossal,  and  not  so  injurious  to 
mankind,  not  flung  broadcast  over  the  earth.     This  great 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  43 

wrong  and  cause  of  wrong,  this  grand  national  blunder,  this 
wretched  military  and  dynastic  caprice,  once  repressed  and 
undone,  the  case  of  France  as  an  aggressor,  but  for  Nice, 
stands  almost  clear.  As  it  is  (and  this  is  for  opinion  almost 
everything)  France  is  the  only  one  of  the  five  great  Powers 
which,  neither  by  alien  domination  nor  imperfect  incorporation, 
oppresses,  insults,  or  misgoverns  any  one  of  the  races  of 
Europe;  which  has  neither  a  Warsaw,  a  Hungary,  a  Venetia, 
nor  a  Posen,  neither  a  Gibraltar  nor  an  Ireland  (written  in 
1864). 

It  is  but  a  corollary  of  this  which  appears  in  her  wonderful 
national  cohesion  and  unity.  France  may  be  said  to  be  the 
only  perfectly  homogeneous  nation  in  Europe.  Russia  with 
her  cancer  in  Poland,  Austria  with  her  wen  in  Hungary, 
stand  at  one  end  of  the  scale;  France  stands  at  the  other. 
The  Spanish  and  the  Italian  populations  are  both  cohesive 
in  a  high  degree;  but  the  unity  of  neither  is  equal  to  that  of 
France.  The  Piedmontese  and  the  Neapolitan  have  not  yet 
learned  to  feel  as  the  children  of  one  fatherland;  the  Moor, 
the  Goth,  and  the  Kelt  in  Spain  are  not  yet  wholly  amalga- 
mated. Prussia  with  her  patchwork  of  duchies;  Austria 
with  her  hostile  races;  little  Switzerland  with  her  trilingual 
feuds;  even  England  with  her  Irish  difficulties,  can  none  of 
them  pretend  to  the  complete  fusion,  the  organic  unity,  the 
intense  concentration  which  binds  together  as  one  man  the 
forty  millions  of  the  French  race. 

But  there  is  another  consideration  of  a  very  different  kind, 
which,  were  all  the  preceding  conditions  different  from  what 
they  are,  would  suffice  to  mark  off  France  as  possessing  a 
special  function  in  Europe.  In  France  is  found  the  origin, 
the  centre,  and  the  impulse  of  that  Revolution  which  is  as 
truly  European  as  it  is  French.  This  is  not  the  place  to 
analyse  or  discuss  this  great  historical  movement;   it  is  suffi- 


44  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

cient  for  our  purpose  that  it  is  an  axiom  acknowledged  by 
all  competent  inquirers,  that  this  Revolution  is  at  once  the 
issue  of  the  past  and  the  cradle  of  the  future  civilisation  of 
Europe;  that  France  is  but  the  scene  of  its  acute  crisis,  the 
centre  from  which  it  is  destined  to  radiate  through  the  Euro- 
pean system. 

The  thorough  comprehension  of  this,  the  key  of  all  modern 
history,  is  the  first  and  indispensable  qualification  for  a  states- 
man; and  the  vacillations  and  helplessness  of  the  politicians 
of  the  old  school  are  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  they  attempt 
to  deal  with  the  problems  of  Europe  whilst  ignoring  the  first 
conditions  of  their  solution.  To  officials  bred  up  in  the 
purblind  doctrines  of  Pitt  and  Castlereagh  the  French  Rev- 
olution may  appear  as  a  mere  national  rebellion,  once  big 
with  portents  and  horrors,  but  long  since  crushed  or  exhausted. 
It  is  time  that  politicians  saw  it,  as  historical  students  see  it, 
to  be  a  real  regeneration  of  modern  society,  of  which  as  yet 
nothing  but  the  initial  convulsions  are  past,  and  in  which  as 
yet  but  one  people  has  fully  participated. 

That  Revolution  in  its  political  aspect  implies  the  abolition 
of  every  form  of  hereditary  government,  whether  resting  on 
force,  tradition,  class,  or  caste,  and  the  substitution  for  it  of 
a  government  of  personal  fitness,  actively  recognised  by  the 
governed,  and  maintained  by  them  in  the  sole  interest  of  the 
common  social  progress.  This  involves  the  gradual  ex- 
tinction of  all  modes  of  political  rule  derived  from  birth,  of 
the  hereditary  principle  in  all  its  phases,  whether  monarchic, 
feudal,  or  industrial,  and  the  resettlement  of  the  state  system 
on  national  and  geographical  bases.  It  implies  in  its  social 
aspect  the  extinction  of  the  arbitrary  classification  according 
to  the  aristocratic  hierarchy,  and  the  substitution  of  the  natural 
classification  of  personal  merit.  In  its  moral  aspect  it  implies 
the  subjection  of  individual  propensities  to  a  recognised  code 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  45 

of  social  duty.  In  the  intellectual  aspect  it  implies  a  common 
system  of  belief,  resting  on  free  and  accepted  demonstration, 
and  the  maintenance  of  that  faith  by  an  organised  system  of 
education. 

This  conception,  as  a  whole,  of  a  regenerated  social  exist- 
ence has  penetrated  in  a  general  way  France  alone  among 
the  nations,  and  even  her  but  incompletely.  Yet  no  un- 
pledged observer  doubts  the  degree  to  which  it  has  modified 
the  others,  and  the  certainty  of  its  ultimate  establishment  in 
all.  Those  who  watch  events  from  the  ground  of  history 
rather  than  party  can  see  in  the  spasm  which  shook  Europe 
in  1830;  in  the  revolutions  which  convulsed  it  in  1848;  in 
the  revulsion  of  public  opinion  since  the  close  of  the  great 
war  which  separates  us  as  by  a  gulf  from  the  ideas  of  Alex- 
ander, Pitt,  and  Metternich;  in  the  resurrection  of  Italy  as 
a  nation ;  in  the  revival  of  Spain ;  in  the  unrest  within  the 
German  principalities ;  in  the  mode  in  which  the  movements 
and  ideas  of  Europe  react  on  our  own  home  politics  and 
thoughts,  and  still  more  on  those  of  others;  in  the  subter- 
ranean surging  of  the  revolutionary  forces  from  Glasgow  to 
Naples,  from  Warsaw  to  Madrid,  the  sure  signs  of  this 
stupendous  movement,  its  might,  and  its  centre-point.  And 
a  politician  is  distinctly  disqualified  for  his  task  who  ignores 
the  importance  of  this  principle  in  all  political  questions 
whatever,  or  ignores  the  truth  that  France  is  at  once  its  em- 
bodiment and  its  apostle. 

It  results  from  all  the  preceding  considerations  —  from 
her  geographical  position,  from  her  military,  naval,  and 
industrial  renown,  from  her  language,  history,  literature, 
and  general  prestige,  from  the  spontaneous  adoption  of  her 
ideas,  tone,  and  aims,  but  chiefly  from  her  being  the  centre 
of  the  great  movement  —  that  France  possesses  a  priority  or 
initiative  in  the  progressive  civilisation  of  Europe,  very  diffi- 


46  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

cult  to  define  with  exactness,  but  which  cannot  be  gainsaid. 
In  a  subject  like  this,  nothing  can  be  less  in  place  than 
puerile  comparisons  between  nations ;  but  only  the  shallowest 
vanity  can  prevent  us  from  determining  the  relative  duties  of 
each  nation.  England  and  France,  like  the  rest,  have  each 
their  parts;  and  neither  would  be  competent  to  fulfil  the 
office  of  the  other.  No  thoughtful  reader  will  see  in  this 
statement  any  crude  classification  of  nations,  or  the  affecta- 
tion of  adjudging  absolute  inferiority  or  superiority  to  any. 
All  that  is  here  implied  by  the  initiative  of  France  is  the  truth 
visible  in  present  facts,  and  naturally  to  be  expected  from 
the  survey  of  the  past,  that  most  of  the  ideas  which  move 
modern  society  are  first  or  most  strongly  enunciated  in 
France;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  what  the  French 
people  proclaim  is  received,  on  the  whole,  with  the  largest 
share  of  attention  by  the  rest  of  Europe. 

A  statement  so  simple  and  so  like  a  truism  can  scarcely 
awaken  the  most  sensitive  self-love;  and  Englishmen  may 
explain  it  as  they  please,  but  they  can  hardly  venture  to 
deny  it.  It  amounts  to  little  more  than  to  say  that  principles 
adopted  in  France  are  expressed  in  a  form  and  language 
and  with  an  energy  which  are  most  favourable  to  their  dis- 
semination ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  that  no  people  in 
Europe  have  so  immediate  a  machinery  for  carrying  their 
ideas  amongst  others.  The  people  who  within  the  last  one 
hundred  years  succeeded  in  pouring  their  victorious  armies 
over  five  countries  of  Europe  simultaneously,  and  raised  an 
empire  (in  a  measure  an  empire  of  ideas)  coextensive  with 
the  western  half  of  the  Continent,  have  earned  for  any  policy 
that  they  espouse  a  very  special  interest.  And  the  country 
which  represents  the  greatest  number  of  the  interests  of 
modern  European  nations,  and  whose  movements  are  most 
rapidly  felt  by  the  greatest  number  of  those  nations ;   which 


ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE  47 

possesses  the  most  numerous  relations  with  them,  and  stands 
most  nearly  in  an  intermediate  position  in  the  antagonisms 
which  agitate  them,  is  naturally  that  country  the  action  of 
which  most  powerfully  determines  that  of  the  rest.  That 
country  is  obviously  France;  and  if  we  attribute  a  distinct 
initiative  in  Europe  to  her,  it  is  but  to  resume  the  familiar 
notion  that  in  the  public  questions  of  Europe  the  attitude  of 
France  is  awaited  as  of  critical  importance. 


IV 


So  far  from  France  and  England  having  been  natural 
antagonists,  so  far  from  enmity  or  even  rivalry  having  been 
their  normal  condition,  they  have  been,  in  the  higher  sense 
of  political  sympathies,  inseparable  colleagues  and  natural 
allies.  The  greater  rulers  of  both  countries  have  systemati- 
cally encouraged  friendship  between  them.  From  the  Middle 
Ages  down  to  the  Coalition  against  the  Revolution  of  1793, 
the  two  countries  have  never  been  engaged  in  any  obstinate 
and  ineradicable  antagonism  of  policy,  except  when  all 
Northern  Europe  was  banded  to  crush  the  headlong  am- 
bition of  Louis  XIV.  It  may  be  said,  if  we  except  this 
period,  that  England  has  never  exercised  any  influence  in 
Europe  at  once  commanding  and  beneficent,  unless  she  has 
been  acting  in  concert  with  France.  The  very  notion  of  the 
natural  antipathy  and  contrast  between  ourselves  and  our 
neighbours  is  a  remnant  only  of  the  retrograde  passions 
which  inspired  the  Coalition  of  Pitt.  To  speak  of  France  as 
a  natural  antagonist  is  the  part  of  men  whose  views  of  state- 
craft are  drawn  from  the  later  ravings  of  Burke,  to  whom 
history  has  no  lessons  earlier  than  Marlborough.  Calmer 
reasoning   and   broader   knowledge   bring   us   to   the   very 


48  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

opposite  belief.  And  if  the  decade  1855-65  did  much  to 
extinguish  these  irrational  prejudices,  it  is  due  not  to  the 
Napoleons  or  Palmerstons,  nor  even  to  commercial  treaties 
and  Oriental  alliances,  but  to  the  fact  that  the  calming  of 
the  revolutionary  movement  in  France  has  coincided  with 
its  progress  in  England ;  that  as  the  area  of  its  influence  has 
been  widened,  the  violence  of  its  action  has  been  reduced ; 
and  France  and  England  have  been  drawn  together  in  their 
natural  task  of  co-ordinating  the  progress  of  Europe. 

It  has  been  growing  up  as  a  maxim  with  a  certain  vigorous 
and  honest  body  of  politicians,  that  the  true  policy  of  a  coun- 
try like  England  is  to  withdraw  almost  entirely  from  diplo- 
matic or  national  action  in  any  state  of  Europe;  that  her 
sole  duty  is  to  be  friendly  with  all,  to  have  alliances  and 
even  relations  with  none.  That  such  a  paradox  should 
have  obtained  any  support,  that  it  should  have  seduced  the 
most  conscientious  and  sagacious  of  our  public  men,  is  a 
singular  proof  of  the  disorganisation  of  all  political  doctrines. 
Nothing  but  the  aimless  meddling  into  which  our  former 
diplomacy  degenerated  can  explain  such  a  blunder  in  men 
of  the  high  moral  and  intellectual  vigour  of  Mr.  Cobden  and 
Mr.  Bright.  Seeing,  as  they  do,  that  in  the  hands  of  aristo- 
cratic statesmen  of  the  old  school  political  action  on  the 
Continent  ends  in  little  but  spiritless  meddling,  without 
vigour,  system,  or  principle,  they  might  well  be  forgiven  for 
believing  that  no  end  can  be  put  to  such  a  course  but  by  a 
period  of  rest  and  abstinence. 

But  for  any  end  less  temporary  a  real  and  systematic 
foreign  policy  is  absolutely  essential ;  and  the  only  effectual 
mode  of  closing  the  era  of  weak  and  restless  intervention  is 
to  substitute  for  it  a  system  of  definite  action.  Mr.  Cobden 
and  Mr.  Bright  have  been  deceiving  themselves,  or  are 
deceived.     They  have  been  in  this  but  the  mouthpiece  of  a 


ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE  49 

party  to  which  they  are  themselves  immeasurably  superior. 
Their  own  objects  and  motives  have  done  honour  to  their 
genius;  but  the  real  scheme  of  the  apostles  of  peace  and 
non-intervention  at  any  cost  is  to  make  national  well-being 
consist  in  the  unrestricted  development  of  individual  industry. 
Free  trade,  peace,  commerce,  industry,  are  with  them  the 
ends,  not  the  means,  of  public  prosperity.  The  happiness 
of  nations  does  not  consist,  any  more  than  that  of  men,  in 
the  free  accumulation  of  capital.  Growing  rich  is  to  a 
people  just  what  it  is  to  a  man.  Civilisation  means  a  great 
deal  more  than  labour,  and  more  than  material  wealth  and 
industrial  cultivation.  It  means  the  uniform  education  of 
the  human  powers,  whether  in  communities  or  in  man ;  and 
of  these  the  social  and  generous  instincts  are  the  highest. 
It  implies  an  intricate  social  union ;  control,  government, 
and  association ;  it  cannot  exist  without  mutual  support, 
trust,  and  co-operation ;  the  protection  of  the  weak  by  the 
strong;  the  subordination  of  the  unwise  to  the  wise;  the 
combination  of  all  in  common  duties ;  the  sacrifice  of  many 
personal  desires;  the  willingness  to  bear  the  common 
burdens. 

These  trite  maxims  of  common  morality,  which,  what- 
ever we  may  practise,  all  of  us  recognise  in  private  life,  yet 
require  to  be  repeated  when  we  deal  with  public  and  national 
concerns.  As  applied  to  the  members  of  a  nation,  no  one 
gainsays  or  misconceives  these  familiar  truths.  The  blindest 
votary  of  the  new  doctrines  does  not  propose  as  a  panacea 
for  our  public  difficulties  that  every  man  should  confine  him- 
self to  the  affairs  of  his  own  county,  his  own  city,  or  his 
own  parish.  Pushed  to  its  extreme,  the  total  disregard  of  all 
social  interests  is  admitted  to  be  the  meanest  form  of  self- 
ishness. But  if  citizens  have  national  duties,  they  have,  for 
just  the  same  reasons,  international  duties  as  well.     There 

E 


50  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

is  nothing  mysterious  about  the  aggregate  we  call  a  nation. 
The  aggregate  which  forms  the  state  system  of  Europe  is 
just  as  real,  and  if  it  is  somewhat  less  definite,  it  is  in  some 
points  of  view  decidedly  more  important.  The  progress  of 
civilisation  for  us  depends  ultimately  and  in  the  long-run 
even  more  upon  the  state  of  Europe  than  on  the  state  of 
any  particular  nation.  The  moral,  intellectual,  and  indus- 
trial growth  of  England,  speaking  in  the  highest  sense,  is 
determined  by  that  of  the  West  as  a  whole.  If  by  moral 
growth  we  mean  a  wiser  and  more  generous  public  opinion ; 
by  intellectual  growth,  the  more  systematic  cultivation  of  the 
whole  mental  powers;  by  industrial  growth,  not  the  mere 
accretion  of  capital,  but  a  happier  organisation  of  labour 
(and  no  lower  estimate  is  worthy  of  thinker,  politician,  or 
citizen),  then  we  may  be  sure  that  the  progress  of  our  people 
in  these  things  is  never  very  far  removed  from  the  progress 
of  the  people  around  us. 

From  the  other  nations  of  Europe,  we  draw  the  raw 
stuff  of  our  civilisation,  material,  scientific,  and  educational. 
Thought  is  absolutely  common  to  us  all.  The  highest 
scientific  and  philosophical  truths  which  ultimately  form  our 
intellectual  standards,  and  without  which  even  manufactures 
would  stand  still,  come  to  us  in  far  larger  proportion  from 
across  the  seas  than  from  this  island.  We  carry  abroad 
freer  conceptions  of  commerce,  and  we  benefit  by  the  lessons 
we  have  taught.  We  come  back  with  teaching  on  the  con- 
dition of  the  labourer,  and  we  profit  profoundly  by  our 
study.  The  political  affinities  are  no  less  powerful.  Good 
government  amongst  our.  neighbours  is  a  dangerous  example 
for  bad  government  at  home.  The  triumph  of  progress  and 
freedom  there  gives  new  life  to  our  political  activity.  Nor  is 
this  less  true  of  the  other  nations  in  their  turn  than  it  is  of 
ourselves.     This  intercommunion  of  tone,  aims,  and  ideas 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  5 1 

permeates  all  alike.  If  Englishmen  have  the  closest  rela- 
tions with  their  neighbours  in  Europe,  scientific,  educational, 
moral,  industrial,  and  social,  they  cannot  avoid  having 
political  relations  also. 

Civilisation  is  a  very  complex  whole.  A  healthy  political 
condition  is  one  of  its  indispensable  conditions,  as  of  all 
living  men  our  two  popular  leaders  have  most  earnestly 
maintained.  A  diseased  political  state  will  arrest  and  dis- 
tort for  a  time  every  other  kind  of  development.  Industry  is 
but  a  side  of  the  work  of  civilisation,  and  it  is  just  that  side 
of  it  which  convulsion  or  syncope  of  the  political  organism 
can  most  effectually  damage.  The  regeneration  of  Euro- 
pean society,  the  working  out  of  the  people  to  a  better  state, 
a  time  of  peaceful  union,  industrial  organisation,  and  uni- 
versal education  —  for  this  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  great 
Revolution  —  is  a  movement  eminently  European,  and  not 
national  or  local.  But  one  of  its  first  conditions,  one  of  its 
most  important  results,  is  that  of  political  regeneration  and 
national  resettlement.  And  this  is  no  less  European  than 
the  still  wider  movement  of  which  it  is  but  a  part.  Each 
nation  is  interested  alike  in  the  good  government  of  all. 
Without  it  peace,  commerce,  and  progress  are  impossible. 
Each  nation  also  can  do  much  to  promote  it.  But  the  mode 
in  which  it  alone  can  do  so  systematically  and  effectually  is 
by  generous  and  resolute  co-operation  in  the  common  coun- 
cils of  all.  Few  nations  can  with  advantage  interfere  in  the 
separate  affairs  of  a  neighbour ;  but  all  together,  and  that 
by  means  no  less  peaceful  than  efficient,  can  give  the  most 
powerful  impulse  to  good  government  in  any,  and  can  cer- 
tainly guarantee  it  from  interference  from  without. 

It  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  on  purely  economic 
grounds  the  consequences  of  national  isolation  would  prove 
most  disastrous.     Liberals  complain  —  and   most  justly  — 


52  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

of  the  enormous  growth  of  our  military  and  naval  expendi- 
ture. Fortifications  and  engineering  experiments  are  fa- 
vourite resources  to  gain  popularity  for  a  minister  or  a 
party;  but  to  make  any  grand  reduction  in  our  armaments 
whilst  France  and  the  rest  of  Europe  are  still  armed  to  the 
teeth,  is  a  plan  to  which  no  tongue  whatever  can  persuade 
our  people  to  submit.  But  the  armaments  of  France  are 
directed  not  so  much  against  us  as  against  Continental 
Powers.  The  army  of  France  is  kept  on  foot  chiefly  by  the 
armies  of  Germany.  These  exist  because  Italy,  Poland, 
and  Hungary  at  any  moment  may  renew  the  effort  for 
national  existence.  The  House  of  Austria  is  still  invol- 
untarily, as  in  the  days  of  Henry,  the  source  of  the  uneasiness 
of  Europe  (1864).  It  has  no  further  function  in  Europe, 
and  retards  and  disturbs  its  progress.  The  army  of  Austria, 
again,  is  the  cause,  but  not  the  excuse,  of  the  army  of  Prussia. 

Prussia,  uneasy  for  her  empire,  watches  with  mingled 
dread  and  hope  the  political  throes  of  the  German  Powers. 
Each  petty  sovereign  keeps  up  his  army  from  old  feudal 
pride  and  conscious  insecurity.  But  another  and  even 
more  powerful  cause  remains.  Outside  this  German  fron- 
tier, beyond  the  pale  of  Western  civilisation,  the  enormous 
hordes  of  the  Russian  despot  stand  for  ever  under  arms. 
Germany,  which  for  political  reasons  distrusts  the  West,  for 
military  reasons  must  turn  with  defiance  to  the  East.  Thus 
the  great  Continental  armies  exist,  and  will  exist  until  the 
political  ulcers  are  excised,  and  until  union  gives  Europe 
strength  to  disregard  the  Oriental  legions  of  Russia. 

Agreement  between  France  and  England  could  do  much, 
and  much  at  once,  to  mitigate  this  evil  of  "militarism"  (as 
Garibaldi,  the  noblest  soldier  of  our  age,  has  called  it), 
which  drains  and  poisons  our  industrial  energy.  But  noth- 
ing can  well  suppress  it  except  the  one  remedy  of  political 


ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE  53 

resettlement.  Whilst  Russia,  revolution,  and  nationalities 
alternately  threaten  Germany,  she  will  have  her  million  and 
a  half  of  bayonets  on  foot.  Whilst  she  has  these,  France 
will  have  her  half  million,  and  England  her  quarter  million. 
The  evil  is  not  with  us  two  so  much  as  with  the  retrograde 
Powers  of  the  East.  It  springs  not  so  much  of  aristocratic 
misgovernment  or  monarchic  pride  as  of  a  chronic  political 
unrest.  To  end  this  alone  is  to  pass  from  a  military  to  an 
industrial  epoch.  To  mitigate  its  convulsions,  to  moderate 
its  violence,  is  to  do  much  to  neutralise  its  evils,  immediate 
and  remote.  When  Europe  is  settled  politically  and  nation- 
ally, her  armies  will  be  disbanded,  but  not  till  then ;  and 
only  as  we  co-operate  in  obtaining  for  her  and  for  ourselves 
this  political  and  national  resettlement  —  a  state  which  shall 
at  once  be  order  and  progress  —  can  we  approach  the  time 
when  the  British  nation  will  consent,  even  if  it  previously 
were  able,  to  cut  off  the  scandalous  profusion  of  our  military 
expenditure. 

Now  whilst  entire  apathy  to  the  political  movement  of 
Europe  is  felt  by  all  but  a  few  fanatics  to  be  a  course  as 
degrading  as  it  is  extravagant,  there  is  still  cherished  by  a 
certain  school  the  idea  of  founding  a  system  of  complete 
neutrality.  That  idea  is  that,  whatever  relations  with  foreign 
countries  England  is  to  maintain,  they  are  never  to  exceed 
a  passive  goodwill  and  a  studied  impartiality.  The  com- 
merce of  all  nations  should  be  welcomed  in  her  ports,  as  the 
ports  of  all  nations  should  be  opened  to  her  commerce.  An 
interchange  of  capital,  the  intercourse  of  the  citizens,  the 
exchange  of  products,  and  international  exhibitions,  should 
give  what  is  wanting  of  noble  to  this  bond  of  material  interest. 
Each  bale  of  goods,  cries  the  able  financier,  comes  bearing  a 
message  of  friendship.  Such  a  view  as  this,  if  meant  for  a 
political  principle,  savours  either  of  the  cant  of  the  rhetorician 


54  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

or  the  pettiness  of  the  tradesman.  That  commercial  can 
override  political  questions  permanently  is  an  idea  to  which 
no  one  with  the  instinct  of  a  statesman  could  yield. 

The  buying  and  selling  of  articles  amongst  the  people  of 
a  nation  does  not  necessarily  involve  the  fusion  of  all  classes 
and  the  extinction  of  all  political  struggles.  No  one  can 
regard  the  history  of  Europe  and  its  present  condition  in 
the  light  of  such  a  sketch  as  has  preceded,  without  recognis- 
ing in  it  as  a  whole  the  unity  and  method  of  a  state  system, 
and  the  great  scale  of  the  forces  with  which  that  system  is 
charged.  Compared  to  them,  the  crude  motive  of  mercantile 
profit  (which  has  been  the  stimulus  often  of  the  most  selfish 
and  ruinous  extravagances)  is  indeed  uncertain  and  futile. 
In  international  precisely  as  in  national  movements  those 
who  take  part  must  stand  on  definite  political  principles, 
and  take  some  definite  attitude  towards  the  great  ideas  or 
social  changes  which  are  at  stake.  Human  society,  on  the 
largest  as  on  the  smallest  scale,  is  far  too  complex  and  noble 
to  be  reduced  to  the  measure  of  any  market  whatever;  and 
it  is  as  absurd  to  look  for  the  solution  of  all  political  ques- 
tions in  Europe,  even  by  the  advent  of  a  Millennium  of 
Free  Trade,  as  it  would  be  to  hope  to  quell  a  revolution  at 
home  by  a  reduction  of  discount. 

Real  neutrality  in  all  European  movements  being  practi- 
cally impossible  for  this  country,  let  us  examine  some  of  the 
chief  political  relations  which  have  been  advocated  or  pur- 
sued. In  that  absence  of  any  intelligible  principle  —  which 
has  so  long  marked  our  vacillating  policy  —  almost  every  pos- 
sible alliance  has  been  tried  or  recommended  by  ministries 
and  parties.  It  was  even  once  the  idea  of  a  school  of  half- 
hearted reactionists  to  associate  ourselves  in  an  intimate 
manner  with  Russia.  An  alliance  with  Turkey  or  China 
would  be  hardly  more  absurd.     As  Russia  differs  from  Eng- 


ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE  55 

land  in  every  social,  political,  and  historical  condition  (to 
say  nothing  of  her  being  outside  the  state  system  of  Europe), 
to  associate  our  policy  with  hers  is  simply  to  appeal  to  the 
old  method  of  material  force,  and  to  retire  ostentatiously 
from  the  field  of  opinion,  progress,  and  moral  weight.  The 
party  which  regards  Russia  as  anything  but  as  a  Power  whose 
ambition  must  be  watched  whilst  its  barbarism  must  be  edu- 
cated, is  at  once  unfit  to  bear  rule  or  give  counsel  in  a  free 
and  advancing  nation. 

An  alliance  with  Prussia,  or  even  North  Germany,  which 
has  been  occasionally  suggested,  must  appear,  at  any  rate  in 
the  light  of  recent  events,  as  an  alliance  which  leaves  simply 
out  of  the  question  the  whole  of  the  Catholic  revolutionary 
and  democratic  forces  of  the  Continent.  It  would  offer  none 
of  the  stability  and  strength  of  the  Russian  alliance,  whilst 
it  shares  in  part  many  of  its  evils.  The  same  reasoning 
applies  just  as  forcibly,  and,  in  spite  of  the  traditions  of  an 
effete  school,  is  far  more  applicable  to  the  Austrian  alliance  — 
that  with  the  South  rather  than  the  North  of  Germany. 
Indeed,  so  hopelessly  is  the  empire  in  its  present  form  doomed 
to  extinction,  so  thoroughly  identified  is  it  with  all  that 
remains  of  reactionary  in  Europe,  that  to  identify  our  policy 
with  hers,  even  in  subordinate  matters,  is  to  look  to  secure 
the  stability  and  progress  of  Europe  by  identifying  ourselves 
with  the  interests  of  its  most  rotten  element.  The  voice  of 
all  that  is  reasonable  and  liberal  in  England  has  been  for  a 
generation  so  loudly  pronounced  against  this  remnant  of  our 
worst  system  of  blundering,  that  it  is  as  little  worth  discussing 
an  alliance  with  South  Germany  as  with  North  Germany. 
A  united  Germany,  as  a  political  unit,  of  all  the  German- 
speaking  peoples,  "the  Pan-Germanic  idea,"  is  as  yet  a 
professor's  dream  (1864). 

An  alliance  or  permanent  relations  with  any  of  the  other 


56  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

European  powers  need  hardly  detain  us  for  consideration. 
Any  one  or  more  of  these  smaller  nations,  however  proper 
to  receive  our  friendship  and  help,  cannot  seriously  be  pro- 
posed as  a  basis  of  combination.  A  continental  policy  for 
England  obviously  implies  relations  with  one  of  the  first- 
rate  Powers.  There  is,  however,  another  alternative.  There 
remains  to  be  considered  another  political  connection,  which 
at  first  sight  offers  far  more  than  any  of  those  which  have 
been  considered,  and  is  vigorously  advocated  by  a  powerful 
and  able  party.  The  creed  of  the  only  political  school  of 
growing  importance  is  an  intimate  alliance  with  America  — 
an  alliance  at  once  political,  social,  and  material  —  or  in  its 
full  form  a  combination  of  the  entire  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
By  this  would  be  implied  a  close  identification  of  interest, 
and  a  combined  action  of  all  the  races  of  the  globe  which 
speak  the  English  tongue.  The  conception  has  a  solid  truth 
at  its  base,  and  is  a  fruitful  and  intelligible  principle.  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  such  a  moral  union  would  be  a  very 
desirable,  a  very  feasible,  and  a  very  pregnant  consumma- 
tion. It  would  lead  to  great  and  valuable  political  ends. 
It  would  certainly  represent  an  enormous  force,  material  as 
well  as  moral,  and  a  vast  expansion  of  industrial  life. 

For  all  this,  however,  it  is  not,  and  can  never  be,  a  cardinal 
political  idea.  An  Anglo-Saxon  alliance,  however  intimate 
and  however  powerful,  never  can  reach  to  the  level  of  the 
true  European  questions.  It  is  not  a  harmony  or  balance 
of  elements  and  interests,  it  is  simply  the  augmentation  of 
one.  With  all  the  points  of  difference,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  is,  for  all  European  purposes,  virtually  one.  It  repre- 
sents one  set  of  ideas,  of  political  forces  and  affinities.  The 
whole  of  the  elements  represented  by  France  still  remain 
outside  of  it.  Anglo-Saxonism  is,  after  all,  an  idea,  like  that  of 
Panslavism,  Teutonism,  or  the  Latin  race;    an  idea  which 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  57 

has  a  real  basis,  but  is  exaggerated  into  absurdity.  It  is 
only  a  variety  of  national  egoism.  Anglo-Saxondom  will, 
and  even  now  does,  represent  a  preponderating  material 
force;  but  as  a  key  of  human  progress  it  is  a  vaunt  or 
an  imposture.  There  would  remain  outside  of  it,  and 
without  defined  relation  to  it,  the  whole  of  those  problems 
of  the  European  state  system  with  which  the  Continent  is 
big. 

The  reorganisation  of  Germany,  the  repression  of  Russia, 
the  revival  of  Italy  and  Spain,  the  resettlement  of  Europe, 
the  grand  political  and  social  crises  of  France,  the  bulk,  in 
fact,  of  the  intellectual,  social,  and  practical  movements  of 
Europe,  would  be  things  at  which  the  Saxon  union  would 
look  on,  but  which  it  would  not  be  vitally  concerned  in  or 
able  essentially  to  modify.  Looking  at  the  region  of  ideas 
and  the  moral  forces  of  nations,  it  would  bring  England  little 
nearer  to  the  real  life  of  the  West.  No  one  but  a  man 
driven  crazy  by  national  vanity  could  suppose  that  the  true 
solution  of  all  European  difficulties  would  be  at  once  ob- 
tained, if  England  were  suddenly  doubled  in  population, 
wealth,  and  energy.  And  speaking  in  the  light  of  Euro- 
pean progress  as  a  whole,  the  coalition  of  America  and 
England  would  do  little  more  than  this.  America  is,  after 
all,  another  self,  freed  happily  from  many  of  the  burdens  of 
its  parent,  but  devoid  also  of  much  of  its  laborious  educa- 
tion in  civilisation.  America,  like  England,  has  her  place 
—  a  great  and  a  noble  part  —  amongst  the  heads  of  human 
progress ;  but  that  part  is  as  the  colleague  and  counterpart 
of  England.  The  function  of  each  is  not  the  complement 
of  the  other.  And  it  is  only  an  age  infatuated  with  material 
success  which  can  claim  for  the  material  development  of 
America  an  influence  on  the  destinies  of  Europe  akin  to 
that  which  eight  centuries  of  effort  and  of  growth,   their 


58  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

European  position,  relations,  and  traditions  have  given  to  the 
Anglo-Saxon  people  of  this  island. 

In  point  of  fact,  the  union  of  America  with  England, 
such  as  it  is  conceived  by  the  economic  school  of  politicians, 
would  be  by  itself  rather  a  curse  than  a  blessing  to  the  rest 
of  the  human  family.  Valuable  as  that  union  would  be 
when  subordinated  to  greater  political  relations  and  fixed 
international  duties,  a  mere  league  of  the  two  branches  of 
the  English  race,  to  push  their  settlements,  their  trade,  and 
their  influence  to  indefinite  limits,  would  indeed  be  a  formi- 
dable bar  to  human  progress.  It  would  mean  England  prac- 
tically withdrawn  from  all  her  legitimate  duties  in  Europe; 
for  her  enormous  power  would  be  the  principal  menace  to 
the  combined  nations,  whilst  it  gave  her  but  small  means  of 
controlling  them.  It  would  mean  political  progress  drowned 
in  the  torrent  of  industrial  expansion.  It  would  mean  a 
maritime  supremacy  ten  times  more  tyrannical  and  galling 
than  of  old;  more  empires  founded  in  the  East;  more  races 
of  dark  men  sacrificed  to  the  pitiless  genius  of  Free  Trade, 
and  at  the  blood-stained  altar  of  colonial  extension.  It 
would  mean  the  subversion  of  ancient  kingdoms,  the  de- 
moralisation of  primitive  societies,  the  extermination  of  un- 
offending races.  If  the  great  national  shame  and  danger, 
which  it  behoves  every  patriotic  Englishman  to  avert,  be,  as 
I  solemnly  believe  it  to  be,  the  growth  of  mercantile  injustice 
in  our  empire,  this  shame  and  danger  would  be  largely  in- 
creased, were  England  to  gain  at  once  an  enormous  increase 
of  power  and  a  stimulus  to  her  material  lusts.  America  thus 
would  add  to  her  impunity  whilst  encouraging  her  vices. 
Valuable  as  Anglo-Saxonism  is  as  part  of  a  wider  system  of 
political  combinations,  to  substitute  it  by  itself  for  such  a 
system  would  be  the  surest  road  to  national  decline. 

By  this  method  of  logical  exhaustion  we  come  back,  there- 


ENGLAND   AND   FRANCE  59 

fore,  to  the  only  possible  and  rational  basis  of  English  policy, 
a  close  understanding  with  France.  It  is  easy  to  see  how 
natural  and  solid  such  a  policy  is  —  paramount  in  its  advan- 
tages not  in  one  respect,  but  in  all  respects.  In  the  first 
place,  whilst  it  is  most  true  that  the  Western  Powers  form  a 
system  of  themselves,  it  has  been  shown  to  be  no  less  obvious 
that  there  is  in  this  system  a  certain  dualism,  and  that  of 
this  dualism  France  and  England  are  the  foremost  repre- 
sentatives. As  far  the  most  powerful  of  the  actual  Euro- 
pean nations,  as  far  the  most  advanced,  as  far  the  most 
stable,  these  two  nations  form,  for  the  moment,  an  order  by 
themselves.  However  desirable  it  may  be  that  the  state 
system,  which  is  even  now  morally  one,  should  become 
politically  one  or  legally  consolidated,  it  would  be  Utopian 
to  expect  common  European  action,  or  even  standing  Euro- 
pean councils  or  congresses,  for  many  a  generation.  In  the 
meantime  a  settled  understanding  and  a  healthy  co-opera- 
tion between  England  and  France  is  possible,  and  may  well 
represent  and  do  duty  for  the  other.  Nor  is  this  simply  a 
vision  of  the  future. 

When  the  two  Western  Powers  allied  themselves  to  defend 
Constantinople  and  Eastern  Europe  from  the  Tartar,  in 
spite  of  the  indecision  and  incompleteness  of  their  action,  in 
spite  of  the  selfish  aims  and  the  petty  intrigues  from  which 
neither  was  free,  in  spite  of  the  opposition  and  alarm  of 
Germany  —  it  was  felt  that  the  Crimean  war  was  an  under- 
taking in  the  name  and  interest  of  Europe,  which  could  only 
be  closed  by  a  European  conference,  and  which  opened  a 
new  European  epoch.  Secondly,  the  extreme  diversity  of 
England  and  France  enables  them  together  fairly  to  repre- 
sent and  to  harmonise  the  principal  elements  of  European 
society.  In  the  next  place,  their  interests  are  so  far  dif- 
ferent, and  yet  so  far  from  antagonistic,  that  any  common 


60  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

course  which  they  take  cannot  be  far  from  the  interests  of 
the  rest  of  Europe.  France  can  never  abet  England  to 
establish  a  tyranny  outside  of  Europe;  nor  could  England 
abet  France  in  establishing  one  within  it. 

Now  what  is  here  meant  is  not  an  alliance  with  France, 
or  mere  friendliness  towards  France,  much  less  flattery  of 
the  actual  rulers  of  France,  —  rather  a  well-considered 
agreement  with  the  French  nation  upon  the  main  features 
of  their  joint  policy.  It  would  be  quite  possible  for  the 
directors  of  the  two  nations,  if  at  all  worthy  of  the  name,  to 
lay  down  broad  paths  of  action  on  all  the  chief  European 
questions,  which  should  duly  satisfy  the  interests  of  both, 
strengthen  the  moral  and  the  material  position  of  both,  and 
yet  awaken  none  of  the  jealousies  of  their  neighbours.  It 
need  scarcely  be  said  that  such  an  agreement,  prepared  as  a 
whole  and  honestly  proclaimed,  could  not  possibly  comprise 
schemes  prejudicial  to  the  other  Powers,  or  referring  exclu- 
sively to  the  selfish  interests  of  either.  Neither  could  have 
the  smallest  interest  to  assist  the  other  in  aggression,  spolia- 
tion, or  tyranny.  Nor  could  they  agree  for  mutual  aid  to 
such  ends;  for  each  would  feel  even  more  indignation  in 
such  a  scheme  in  the  other  than  it  would  feel  satisfaction  in 
being  abetted  in  such  a  scheme  itself. 

The  various  projects  of  national  aggrandisement  justly 
and  unjustly  attributed  to  France  would  one  and  all  be 
distinctly  repudiated  and  provided  against.  England  on  her 
part  must  surrender  and  disclaim  the  actual  or  the  imputed 
wrongs  against  the  rights  of  her  neighbours  with  which  she 
is  charged,  —  be  it  Gibraltar,  be  it  Malta,  be  it  the  empire 
of  the  seas  or  imperial  arrogance.  It  would  be  easy  for  both 
nations  to  give  up  these  objects  of  vulgar  ambition  or  irra- 
tional pride  in  exchange  for  greater  and  more  lasting  objects 
of  national  glory.     That  in  this  stage  of  civilisation  they 


ENGLAND    AND    FRANCE  6 1 

still  disturb  the  ideas  and  the  acts  of  two  great  nations  is 
due  chiefly  to  the  utter  state  of  disorganisation  to  which 
the  European  state  system  is  reduced,  and  to  the  rebuffs 
which  the  better  hopes  and  efforts  of  each  so  continually 
meet  from  the  other.  The  failure  of  these  is  due,  however, 
mainly  to  this,  that  England  and  France  are  constantly  en- 
gaged in  carrying  out  a  policy  without  the  aid  of,  occasionally 
in  spite  of  the  opposition  of,  the  other. 

The  great  fact  of  a  permanent  understanding  between 
England  and  France,  when  once  distinctly  proclaimed,  would 
alone  suffice  to  achieve  or  prepare  most  of  its  happiest  re- 
sults. So  soon  as  it  was  really  understood  throughout  Eu- 
rope that  England  and  France  had  definitely  concluded  a 
comprehensive  agreement  on  all  the  greater  questions  of 
policy,  formally  renouncing  or  abandoning  all  pretensions 
odious  or  menacing  to  other  states,  publicly  engaging  to  use 
their  vast  resources  and  their  legitimate  influence  in  concert 
for  the  general  settlement  of  the  state  system  in  the  cause 
equally  of  order  and  progress,  many  of  the  principal  per- 
plexities of  the  Continent  would  be  in  a  fair  way  towards 
solution  at  once.  The  preposterous  projects  with  which 
desperate  reactionists  and  revolutionists  in  turn  trouble  the 
harmony  of  the  West  would  be  little  heard  of,  when  all  were 
aware  of  a  settled  determination  on  the  part  of  the  two  great 
heads  of  Europe  that  she  should  be  delivered  over  neither 
to  oppression  nor  to  anarchy,  but  that  the  gradual  resettle- 
ment of  states  into  a  new  and  completer  system  of  liberty 
should  be  carried  on  without  recoil  and  without  confusion. 

Russia,  who  has  so  long  traded  on  the  jealousies  and  in- 
trigues of  the  West,  would  at  last  abandon  her  long  dream 
of  aggression  upon  Europe.  Austria  would  reconcile  her- 
self to  treat  for  Venetia,  and  prepare  herself  for  her  trans- 
formed existence.     Prussia,  that  Russia  of  North  Germany, 


62  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

would  see  that  no  fresh  divisions  would  enable  her  to  pursue 
unchecked  her  ambitious  career.  Italy  would  at  once  feel 
absolutely  guaranteed  against  the  pressure  of  her  friends  or 
the  aggressions  of  her  enemies,  and  would  turn  to  national 
restoration,  relieved  from  the  intrigues  which  are  due  to  the 
one,  and  the  military  incubus  which  is  caused  by  the  other. 
Spain  would  recover  her  pride,  develop  her  enormous  re- 
sources, without  the  necessity  of  courting  the  rulers  of 
France,  of  flouting  those  of  England,  and  of  tyrannising 
over  petty  outlying  nations.  The  smaller  nations  one  and 
all  might  look  for  a  real  insurance  against  oppression,  and 
might  learn  to  trust  to  opinion  instead  of  to  intrigue.  The 
partisans  of  the  old  system,  their  cause  visibly  lost,  would 
learn  resignation.  The  partisans  of  the  new,  their  cause 
taken  out  of  their  hands,  would  learn  patience.  Peace, 
trade,  and  civilisation  would  gain,  not  by  commercial  treaties, 
but  by  a  healthier  political  atmosphere.  Who  shall  gainsay 
that  such  results  do  not  incomparably  transcend  the  vulgar 
and  shifting  objects  of  ambition  which  each  Power  in  its 
isolation  now  alternately  pursues? 


Postscript,  June  1908.  —  The  foregoing  Essay,  written  in 
1864,  was  published  in  1866  in  International  Policy,  a  joint 
volume  of  seven  "Essays  on  the  Foreign  Relations  of  Eng- 
land" (Chapman  and  Hall,  8vo  —  second  edition,  1884, 
1 2 mo).  It  will  be  remembered  that  it  was  composed  be- 
tween the  Crimean  war  and  the  Franco- German  war,  at  a 
time  when  the  German  Empire  did  not  exist,  and  Prussia 
was  but  the  leading  State  of  North  Germany ;  when  Austria 
dominated  Italy,  and  oppressed  Hungary;  when  France 
occupied  Rome.  After  forty-four  years  I  reissue  it  in  the  year 
of  European  ententes  to  which  I  looked  forward  not  in  vain. 


II 

THE   FUTURE   OF  WOMAN 

The  system  of  thought  on  which  this  entire  series  of  Essays 
is  based  seeks  to  moralise  and  to  spiritualise  the  great  insti- 
tutions of  society  —  not  to  revolutionise  or  to  materialise 
them.  In  nothing  is  this  character  more  conspicuous  than 
in  its  teaching  as  to  the  social  Future  of  Woman.  It  is  in- 
tensely conservative  as  to  the  distinctive  quality  with  which 
civilisation  has  ever  invested  women,  whilst  it  is  ardently 
progressive  in  its  aim  to  purify  and  spiritualise  the  social 
function  of  women.  It  holds  firmly  the  middle  ground 
between  the  base  apathy  which^  is  satisfied  with  the  actual 
condition  of  woman  as  it  is,  and  the  restless  materialism 
which  would  assimilate,  as  far  as  possible,  the  distinctive 
functions  of  women  to  those  of  men,  which  would  "equalise 
the  sexes"  in  the  spirit  of  justice,  as  they  phrase  it,  and  would 
pulverise  the  social  groups  of  families,  sexes,  and  professions 
into  individuals  organised,  if  at  all,  by  unlimited  resort  to 
the  ballot-box.  Herein  we  are  truly  conservative  in  holding 
society  to  be  made  up  of  families,  not  of  individuals,  and  in 
developing,  not  in  annihilating,  the  differences  of  sex,  age, 
and  relation  between  individuals. 

But  first,  let  us  get  rid  of  the  unworthy  suspicion  that  we 
are  content  with  the  condition  of  women  as  we  see  it,  even 
in  the  advanced  populations  of  the  West  to-day.  As  1VL, 
Laffitte  has  so  well  put  it,  the  "test  of  civilisation  is  the  place 
which  it  assigns  to  women."  In  a  rudimentary  state  we 
find  women  treated  with  brutal  oppression,  little  better  than 

63 


64  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

slaves  or  beasts  of  burden,  where  the  conditions  of  existence 
make  such  tasks  almost  a  cruel  necessity  for  all.  In  many 
societies  of  a  high  civilisation,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
intellectual  activity  or  military  organisation,  the  condition  of 
women  is  often  found  to  be  one  of  seclusion,  neglect,  or  humili- 

(ation,  moral,  physical,  and  intellectual.     Even  to-day,  under 
the  most  favourable  conditions  —  conditions,  perhaps,  more 
often  found   in   some   sections  of  the  labouring  classes  of 
cities  rather  than  amongst  the  spoiled  daughters  of  wealth 
and  power  —  it   is  shocking  to   see  how  backward  is  the 
education  of  women  as  a  sex,  how  much  their  lives  are  over- 
burdened by  labour,  anxiety,  and  unwomanly  fatigues,  by 
frivolous    excitement    and    undue    domestic    responsibility, 
by  the  fever  of  public  ambitions  and  cynical  defiance  of  all 
womanly  ideals. 
/   No !   we  can  never  rest  satisfied  with  the  current  prejudice/ 
^   /  that  assigns  to  woman,  even  to  those  with  ample  leisure  and 
A    resources,  an  education  different  in  kind  and  degree  and 
avowedly  inferior  to  that  of  men,  which  supposes  that  even 
a  superior  education  for  girls  should  be  limited  to  a  moderate 
I    knowledge  of  a  few  modern  languages,  and  a  few  elegant 
V  accomplishments.     This  truly  Mahometan  or  Hindoo  view 
of  woman's  education  is  no  longer  openly  avowed  by  cultured 
people  of  our  own  generation.     But  it  is  too  obviously  still 
the  practice  in  fact  throughout  the  whole  Western  world, 
even  for  nine-tenths  of  the  rich.     And  as  to  the  ^ducatioji, 
which  is  officially  provided  for  thejpoor,  it  is  in  this  country, 
at  least,  almost  too  slight  to  deserve  the  name  at  all.     For 
7"  this  m^'dreadfuTnegTect  let  us  call  aloucTfoTra dical belief. 
/    We  call  aloud  for  an  education  for  women  in  the  same  line  as 
that  of  men,  to  be  given  by  the  same  teachers,  and  covering 
the  same  ground,  though  not  at  all  necessarily  to  be  worked 
out  in  common  or  in  the  same  form  and  with  the  same  practi- 


THE    FUTURE    OF    WOMAN  65 

cal  detail.  ^It  must  be  an  education,  essentially  in  scientific 
basis__the  same  as  that  of  men,  conducted  by  \he_^me^juxd- 
those  the  best  attainable,  instructors  —  an  education  certainly 
"not  inferior,  rather  superior  to  that  of  men,  inasmuch  as  it 
can  easily  be  freed  from  the  drudgery  incidental  to  the  prac- 
tice of  special  trades,  and  also  because  it  is  adapted  to  the 
more  sympathetic,  more  alert,  more  tractable,  more  imagina- 
tive intelligence  of  women. 

'  So,  also,  we  look  to  the  good  feeling  of  the  future  to  relieye 
women  from  the  agonising  we;  r  and  tear  of  families  far  too 
large  to  be  reared  by  one  mother  —  a  burden  which  crushes 
down  the  best  years  of  life  for  so  many  mothers,  sisters,  and 
daughters  —  a  burden  which,  whilst  it  exists,  makes  all 
expectation  of  superior  education  or  greater  moral  elevation 
in  the  masses  of  women  mere  idle  talk  — (a,  burden  which 
would  never  be  borne  at  all,  were  it  not  that  the  cry  of  the 
market  for  more  child  labour  produces  an  artificial  bounty 
on  excessively  large  families.     And  to  the  future  we  look  to 


set  women  free  from  the  crushing  factory  labour  which  is  the 
real  slaye-trade_of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  one  of  the  most 
retrograde  changes  in  social  fcrder  ever  made  since  Feudalism  Y  &  j 
and  Church  together  extinguished  the  slavery  of  the  ancient. 
world.     In  many  ways  this  slavery  of  modern  Industrialism  \ 
is  quite  as  demoralising  to  men  and  women,  and  in  some  W 
ways  as  injurious  to  society,  as  ever  was  the  mitigated  slavery  I 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  though  its  evils  are  not  quite  so  start-/ 
ling  and  so  cruel. 

/These  are  the  wants  which,  in  our  eyes,  press  with  greatest 
urgency  on  the  condition  of  women,  and  not  their  admission 
to  all  the  severe  labours  and  engrossing  professions  of  men, 
the  assimilation  of  the  life  of  women  to  the  life  of  men,  and 
especially  to  a  share  in  all  public  duties  and  privileges.  The 
root  of  the  matter  is  that  the  social  function  of  women  is 


66  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

essentially   and    increasingly    different    from   that    of   men. 
/  What  is  this  function  ?     It  is  personal,  direct,  domestic ;  work- 
)  ing  rather  through  sympathy  than  through  action,  equally 
a   intellectual  as  that  of  men,  but  acting  more  through  the 
J   imagination,  and  less  through  logic.     We  start  from  this  — 
|  neither  exaggerating  the  difference,  nor  denying  it,  but  rest- 
ing in  the  organic  difference  between  woman  and  man.     It 
is  proved  by  all  sound  biology,  by  the  biology  both  of  man  and 
of  the  entire  animal  series.     It  is  proved  also  by  the  history 
of  civilisation,  and  the  entire  course  of  human  evolution. 
It  is  brought  home  to  us  every  hour  of  the  day,  by  the  in- 
stinctive practice  of  every  family.     And  it  is  illustrated  and 
idealised  by  the  noblest  poetry  of  the  world,  whether  it  be 
the  great  epics  of  the  past  or  the  sum  of  modern  romance/ 

It  is  a  difference  of  nature,  I  say,  an  organic  difference, 
alike  in  body,  in  mind,  in  feeling,  and  in  character  —  a 
difference  which  it  is  the  part  of  evolution  to  develop  and 
not  to  destroy,  as  it  is  always  the  part  of  evolution  to  develop 
organic  differences  and  not  to  produce  their  artificial  assimi- 
lation. A  difference,  I  have  said ;  but  not  a  scale  of  superior- 
ity or  inferiority.  No  theory  more  than  ours  repudiates 
the  brutal  egoism  of  past  ages,  and  of  too  many  present  men 
of  the  world,  which  classes  women  as  the  inferiors  of  men, 
and  the  cheap  sophistry  of  the  vicious  and  the  overbearing 
that  the  part  of  women  inlthe  life  of  humanity  is  a  lower,  &C/i 
less  intellectual,  or  less  active  part.  Such  a  view  is  the  refuge 
of  coarse  natures  and  stunted  brains.  Who  can  say  whether 
it  is  nobler  to  be  husband  or  to  be  wife,  to  be  mother  or  to 
be  son?  Is  it  more  blessed  to  love  or  be  loved,  to  form  a 
character  or  to  write  a  poem  ?  Enough  of  these  idle  conun- 
drums, which  are  as  cynical  as  they  are  senseless.  Every- 
thing depends  on  how  the  part  is  played,  how  near  each  one 
of  us  comes  to  the  higher  ideal  —  how  our  life  is  worked  out, 


THE    FUTURE    OF   WOMAN  67 

not  whether  we  be  born  man  or  woman,  in  the  first  half  of 
the  century  or  in  the  second.  The  thing  which  concerns  us 
is  to  hold  fast  by  the  organic  difference  implanted  by  Nature 
between  Man  and  Woman,  in  body,  in  mind,  in  feeling,  and 
in  energy,  without  any  balancing  of  higher  and  lower,  of 
better  or  of  worse. 

Fully  to  work  out  the  whole  meaning  of  this  difference 
in  all  its  details,  would  involve  a  complete  analysis  in  An- 
thropology and  Ethics,  and  nothing  but  the  bare  heads  of 
the  subject  can  here  be  noticed.  It  begins  with  the  difference 
in  physical  organisation  —  the  condition,  and,  no  doubt  in 
one  sense,  the  antecedent  (I  do  not  say  the  cause)  of  every 
other  difference.  The  physical  organisation  of  women 
differs  from  that  of  men  in  many  ways:  it  is  more  rapidly 
matured,  and  yet,  possibly,  more  viable  (as  the  French  say), 
more  likely  to  live,  and  to  live  longer;  it  is  more  delicate,  in 
all  senses  of  the  word,  more  sympathetic,  more  elastic,  more 
liable  to  shock  and  to  change;  it  is  obviously  less  in  weight, 
in  mass,  in  physical  force,  but  above  all  in  muscular  per- 
sistence. It  is  not  true  to  say  that  the  feminine  organisation 
is,  on  the  whole,  weaker,  because  there  are  certain  forms  of 
fatigue,  such  as  those  of  nursing  the  sick  or  the  infant,  minute 
care  of  domestic  details,  ability  to  resist  the  wear  and  tear 
of  anxiety  on  the  body,  in  wThich  women  certainly  at  present 
surpass  men. 

But  there  is  one  feature  in  the  feminine  organisation 
which,  for  industrial  and  political  purposes,  is  more  important 
than  all.  It  is  subject  to  functional  interruption  absolutely 
incompatible  with  the  highest  forms  of  continuous  pressure. 
With  mothers,  this  interruption  amounts  to  seasons  of  pros- 
/  tratior/during  many  of  the  best  years  of  life :  with  all  women 
(but  a  small  exception  not  worth  considering)  it  involves 
some  interruption  to  the  maximum  working  capacity.     A 


68  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

perfectly  healthy  man  works  from  childhood  to  old  age, 
marries  and  brings  up  a  family  of  children,  without  knowing 
one  hour  of  any  one  day  when  he  was  not  "quite  fit."  No 
woman  could  say  the  same;  and  of  course  no  mother  could 
deny  that,  for  months  she  had  been  a  simple  invalid.  Now, 
for  all  the  really  severe  strains  of  industrial,  professional,  and 
public  careers,  the  first  condition  of  success  is  the  power  to 
endure  long  continuous  pressure  at  the  highest  point,  with- 
out the  risk  of  sudden  collapse,  even  for  an  hour. 

Supposing  all  other  forces  equal,  it  is  just  the  five  per  cent 
of  periodical  unfitness  which  makes  the  whole  difference 
between  the  working  capacity  of  the  sexes.  Imagine  an 
army  in  the  field  or  a  fleet  at  sea,  composed  of  women.  In 
the  course  of  nature,  on  the  day  of  battle  or  in  a  storm,  a 
percentage  of  every  regiment  and  of  every  crew  would  be 
in  childbed,  and  a  much  larger  percentage  would  be,  if  not 
in  hospital,  below  the  mark  or  liable  to  contract  severe  dis- 
ease if  subject  to  the  strain  of  battle  or  storm.  Of  course  it 
will  be  said  that  civil  life  is  not  war,  and  that  mothers  are 
not  intended  to  take  part.  But  all  women  may  become 
mothers;  and  though  industry,  the  professions,  and  politics 
are  not  war,  they  call  forth  qualities  of  endurance,  readiness, 
and  indomitable  vigour  quite  as  truly  as  war. 

^Either  the  theory  of  opening  all  occupations  to  women 
means  opening  them  to  an  unsexed  minority  of  women,  or 
it  means  a  diminution  and  speedy  end  to  the  human  race, 
or  it  means  that  the  severer  occupations  are  to  be  carried 
on  in  a  fashion  far  more  desultory  and  amateurish  than  ever 
has  yet  been  known.  It  is  owing  to  a  very  natural  shrink- 
ing from  hard  facts,  and  a  somewhat  misplaced  conven- 
tionality, that  this  fundamental  point  has  been  kept  out  of 
sight,  whilst  androgynous  ignorance  has  gone  about  claim- 
ing for  women  alueof  toil,  pain,  and  danger,  for  which 


THE    FUTURE    OF    WOMAN     -  J&  69 

every  husband,  every  biologist,  every  physician,  every  mother 
—  every  true  woman  —  knows  that  women  are,  by  the  law 
of  nature,  unfit. 

This  is,  as  I  said,  merely  a  preliminary  part  of  the  ques- 
tion. It  is  decisive  and  fundamental,  no  doubt,  and  it  lies 
at  the  root  of  the  matter.  It  is  a  plain  organic  fact,  that 
ought  to  be  treated  frankly,  and  which  I  have  touched  on  as 
an  incident  only  but  with  entire  directness.  But  I  feel  it  to 
be,  after  all,  a  material,  and  not  an  intellectual  or  spiritual 
ground,  and  to  belong  to  the  lower  aspects  of  the  question. 
We  must  notice  it,  for  it  cannot  be  disregarded;  but  it  is 
by  no  means  the  heart  of  the  matter.  The  heart  of  the 
matter  is  the  greater  power  of  affection  in  Woman,  or,  it  is 
better  to  say,  the  greater  degree  in  which  the  nature  of 
Woman  is  stimulated  and  controlled  by  affection.  It  is  a 
stigma  on  our  generation  that  so  obvious  a  commonplace 
should  need  one  word  to  support  it.  Happily  there  is  one 
trait  in  humanity  which  the  most  cynical  sophistry  has 
hardly  ventured  to  belittle  —  the  devotion  of  the  mother  to 
her  offspring.  '    *? 

This  is  the  universal  and  paramount  aspect  of  the  matter. 
For  the  life  of  every  man  or  woman  now  alive,  or  that  ever 
lived,  has  depended  on  the  mother's  love,  or  that  of  some 
woman  who  played  a  mother's  part.  It  is  a  fact  so  tran- 
scendent that  we  are  wont  to  call  it  an  animal  instinct.  It  is, 
however,  the  central  and  most  perfect  form  of  human  feeling. 
It  is  possessed  by  all  women :  it  is  the  dominant  instinct  of  all 
women;  it  possesses  women,  whether  mothers  or  not,  from 
the  cradle  to  the  grave.  The  most  degraded  woman  is  in 
this  superior  to  the  most  heroic  man  (abnormal  cases  apart). 
It  is  the  earliest,  most  organic,  most  universal  of  all  the 
innate  forces  of  mankind.  And  it  still  remains  the  supreme 
glory    of    Humanity.     In    this    central    feature    of    human 


70  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

nature,  Women  are  always  and  everywhere  incontestably 
pre-eminent.  And  round  this  central  feature  of  human 
nature,  all  human  civilisation  is,  and  ought  to  be  organised; 
and  to  perfecting  it  all  human  institutions  do,  and  ought  to 
converge. 

I  am  very  far  from  limiting  this  glorious  part  of  maternity 
in  woman  to  the  breeding  and  nurture  of  infants;  nor  do  I 
mean  to  concentrate  civilisation  on  the  propagation  of  the 
human  species.  I  have  taken  the  mother's  care  for  the 
infant  as  the  most  conspicuous  and  fundamental  part  of  the 
whole.  But  this  is  simply  a  type  of  the  affection  which  in 
all  its  forms  woman  is  perpetually  offering  to  man  and  to 
woman  —  to  the  weak,  the  suffering,  the  careworn,  the 
vicious,  the  dull,  and  the  over-burdened,  as  mother,  as  wife, 
as  sister,  as  daughter,  as  friend,  as  nurse,  as  teacher,  as 
servant,  as  counsellor,  as  purifier,  as  example,  in  a  word  — 
as  woman.  TThe  true  function  of  woman  is  to  educate,  not 
children  only,  but  men,  to  train  to  a  higher  civilisation,  not\ 
the  rising  generation,  but  the  actual  society.  ;  And  to  do 
this  by  diffusing  the  spirit  of  affection,  of  self-restraint,  self- 
sacrifice,  fidelity,  and  purity.  ..-'And  this  is  to  be  effected,  not 
by  writing  books  about  these  things  in  the  closet,  nor  by 
preaching  sermons  about  them  in  the  congregation,  but  by 
manifesting  them  hour  by  hour  in  each  home  by  the  magic 
of  the  voice,  look,  word,  and  all  the  incommunicable  graces 
of  woman's  tenderness. 

All  this  has  become  so  completely  a  commonplace  that  the 
very  repeating  it  sounds  almost  like  a  jest.  But  it  has  to  be 
repeated  now  that  coarse  sophistry  has  begun,  not  only  to 
forget  it,  but  to  deny  it.  And  we  will  repeat  it;  for  we  have 
nothing  to  add  to  all  that  has  been  said  on  this  cardinal  fact 
of  human  nature  by  poets,  from  Homer  to  Tennyson,  by 
moralists  and  preachers,  by  common  sense  and  pure  minds, 


THE    FUTURE    OF    WOMAN  7 1 

since  the  world  began.  We  have  nothing  to  add  to  it  save 
this  —  which,  perhaps,  is  really  important  —  that  this 
function  of  woman,  the  purifying,  spiritualising,  humanising 
of  society,  by  humanising  each  family  and  by  influencing 
every  husband,  father,  son,  or  brother,  in  daily  contact  and 
in  unspoken  language,  is  itself  the  highest  of  all  human  func- 
tions, and  is  nobler  than  anything  which  art,  philosophy, 
genius,  or  statesmanship  can  produce. 

The  spontaneous  and  inexhaustible  fountain  of  love,  the 
secret  springs  whereof  are  the  mystery  of  womanhood,  this 
is  indeed  the  grand  and  central  difference  between  the  sexes. 
But  the  difference  of  function  is  quite  as  real,  if  less  in  degree, 
when  we  regard  the  intellect  and  the  character.  Plainly,  the 
intellect  of  women  on  the  whole  is  more  early  mature,  more 
rapid,  more  delicate,  more  agile  than  that  of  men;  more 
imaginative,  more  in  touch  with  emotion,  more  sensitive, 
more  individual,  more  teachable,  whilst  it  is  less  capable  of 
prolonged  tension,  of  intense  abstraction,  of  wide  range, 
and  of  extraordinary  complication.  It  may  be  that  this  is 
resolvable  into  the  obvious  fact  of  smaller  cerebral  masses 
and  less  nervous  energy,  rather  than  any  inferiority  of  quality. 

The  fact  remains  that  no  woman  has  ever  approached 
Aristotle  and  Archimedes,  Shakespeare  and  Descartes, 
Raphael  and  Mozart,  or  has  ever  shown  even  a  kindred 
sum  of  powers.  On  the  other  hand,  not  one  man  in  ten  can 
compare  with  the  average  woman  in  tact,  subtlety  of  observa- 
tion, in  refinement  of  mental  habit,  in  rapidity,  agility,  and 
sympathetic  touch.  ^To  ask  whether  the  occasional  outbursts 
of  supreme  genius  in  the  male  sex  are  higher  than  the  almost 
universal  quickness  and  fineness  of  mind  in  the  female  sex, 
is  to  ask  an  idle  question.  To  expel  either  out  of  human 
nature  would  be  to  arrest  civilisation  and  to  plunge  us  into 
barbarism.     And  the  earliest  steps  out  of  barbarism  would 


72  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

have  to  begin  again  in  each  wigwam  with  the  quick  observa- 
tion and  the  flexible  mind,  and  not  with  the  profound  genius. 

As  with  the  intellect  —  so  with  the  powers  of  action. 
The  character  or  energy  of  women  is  very  different  from 
that  of  men ;  though  here  again  it  is  impossible  to  say  which 
is  the  superior,  and  far  less  easy  to  make  the  contrast.  Cer- 
tainly the  world  has  never  seen  a  female  Alexander,  Julius 
Caesar,  Charlemagne,  or  Cromwell.  And  in  mass,  endurance, 
intensity,  variety,  and  majesty  of  will  no  women  ever  approach 
the  greatest  men,  and  no  doubt  from  the  same  reason,  smaller 
cerebral  mass  and  slighter  nervous  organisation.  Yet  in 
qualities  of  constant  movement,  in  perseverance,  in  passive 
endurance,  in  rapidity  of  change,  in  keenness  of  pursuit  (up 
to  a  certain  range  and  within  a  given  time),  in  adaptability, 
agility,  and  elasticity  of  nature,  in  industriousness,  in  love 
of  creating  rather  than  destroying,  of  being  busy  rather  than 
idle,  of  dealing  with  the  minutest  surroundings  of  comfort, 
grace,  and  convenience,  it  is  a  commonplace  to  acknowledge 
women  to  be  our  superiors.  'And  if  a  million  housewives 
do  not  equal  one  Caesar,  they  no  doubt  add  more  to  the 
happiness  of  their  own  generation.    - 

We  come  back  to  this  —  that  in  body,  in  mind,  in  feeling, 
in  character,  women  are  by  nature  designed  to  play  a  different 
part  from  men.  And  all  these  differences  combine  to  point 
to  a  part  personal  not  general,  domestic  not  public,  working 
by  direct  contact  not  by  remote  suggestion,  through  the 
imagination  more  than  through  the  reason,  by  the  heart 
more  than  by  the  head.  There  is  in  women  a  like  intelli- 
gence, activity,  passion;  like  and  co-ordinate,  but  not 
identical ;  .equally  valuable,  but  not  equal  by  measure ;  and 
this  all  works  best  in  the  Home.  That  is  to  say,  the  sphere 
in  which  women  act  at  their  highest  is  the  Family,  and  the 
side   where   they   are   strongest    is   Affection.     The   sphere 


THE   FUTURE   OF   WOMAN  73 

where  men  act  at  their  highest  is  in  public,  in  industry,  in  the 
service  of  the  State;  and  the  side  where  men  are  at  their 
strongest  is  Activity.  Intelligence  is  common  to  both,  capable 
in  men  of  more  sustained  strain,  apt  in  women  for  more 
delicate  and  mobile  service.  That  is  to  say,  the  normal  and 
natural  work  of  women  is  by  personal  influence  within  the 
Home. 

All  this  is  so  obvious,  it  has  been  so  completely  the  universal 
and  instinctive  practice  of  mankind  since  civilisation  began, 
that  to  repeat  it  would  be  wearisome  if  the  modern  spirit 
of  social  anarchy  were  not  now  eager  to  throw  it  all  aside. 
And  we  have  only  to  repeat  the  old  saws  on  the  matter, 
together  with  this  —  that  such  a  part  is  the  noblest  which 
civilisation  can  confer,  and  was  never  more  urgently  needed 
than  it  is  to-day.  In  accepting  it  graciously  and  in  filling  it 
worthily,  women  are  placing  themselves  as  a  true  spiritual 
force  in  the  vanguard  of  human  evolution,  and  are  perform- 
ing the  holiest  and  most  beautiful  of  all  the  duties  which 
Humanity  has  reserved  for  her  best-beloved  children.  The 
source  of  the  outcry  we  hear  for  the  Emancipation  of  Women 
—  their  emancipation  from  their  noblest  duty  —  is  that  in 
this  materialist  age  men  are  prone  to  despise  what  is  pure, 
lofty,  and  tender,  and  to  exalt  what  is  coarse,  vulgar,  and 
vainglorious. 

When  we  say  that  we  would  see  the  typical  work  of  woman 
centred  in  her  personal  influence  in  the  Home,  we  are  not 
asking  for  arbitrary  and  rigid  limitations.  We  are  not 
calling  out  for  any  new  legislation  or  urging  public  opinion 
to  close  any  womanly  employment  for  women.  There  are 
a  thousand  ways  in  which  the  activity  of  women  may  be  of 
peculiar  value  to  the  community,  and  many  of  these  neces- 
sarily carry  women  outside  their  own  houses  and  into  more 
or  less  public  institutions.     The  practice  of  the  ladies  con- 


74  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

nected  with  our  Church  alone  would  satisfy  us  how  great  is 
the  part  which  women  have  to  play  in  teaching,  in  directing 
moral  and  social  institutions,  in  organising  the  higher  standard 
of  opinion,  in  inspiring  enthusiasm  in  young  and  old.  We 
are  heartily  with  such  invaluable  work;  and  we  find  that 
modern  civilisation  offers  to  women  as  many  careers  as  it 
offers  to  men. 

All  that  we  ask  is  that  such  wrork  and  such  careers  shall 
be  founded  on  womanly  ideals,  and  shall  recognise  the  essen- 
tial difference  in  the  social  functions  of  men  and  of  women. 
We  know  that  in  a  disorganised  condition  of  society  there 
are  terrible  accumulations  of  exceptional  and  distressing 
personal  hardship.  Of  course  millions  of  women  have,  and 
can  have,  no  husbands;  hundreds  of  thousands  have  no 
parents,  no  brother,  no  true  family.  No  one  pretends  that 
society  is  without  abundant  room  for  unmarried  women, 
and  has  not  a  mass  of  work  for  women  who  by  circumstances 
have  been  deprived  of  their  natural  family  and  are  without 
any  normal  home.  Many  of  such  women  we  know  to  be 
amongst  the  noblest  of  their  sex,  the  very  salt  of  the  earth. 
But  their  activity  still  retains  its  home-like  beauty,  and  is  still 
womanly  and  not  mannish.  All  that  we  ask  is  that  women, 
whether  married  or  unmarried,  whether  with  families  of 
their  own  or  not,  shall  never  cease  to  feel  like  women,  to 
work  as  women  should,  to  make  us  all  feel  that  they  are  true 
women  amongst  us  and  not  imitation  men?\ 

We  are  not  now  discussing  any  practical  remedy  for  a 
temporary  difficulty;  we  are  only  seeking  to  assert  a  para- 
mount law  of  human  nature.  We  are  defending  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  womanliness  of  woman  against  the  anarchic 
assertors  of  the  manliness  of  woman.  There  is  a  passionate 
party  of  so-called  reformers,  both  men  and  women,  who  are 
crying  out   for  absolute   assimilation  as  a   principle;    and 


THE    FUTURE    OF    WOMAN  75 

such  is  the  weakness  of  politicians  and  leaders  that  this 
coarse  and  ignorant  sophism  is  becoming  a  sort  of  badge 
of  Radical  energy  and  freedom  from  prejudice.  With  all 
practical  remedies  for  admitted  social  diseases  we  are  ever 
ready  to  sympathise.  In  the  name  of  mercy  let  us  all  do 
our  best  with  the  practical  dilemmas  which  society  throws 
up.  But  let  us  not  attempt  to  cure  them  by  pulling  society 
down  from  its  foundations  and  uprooting  the  very  first  ideas 
of  social  order.  Exceptions  and  painful  cases  we  have  by 
the  thousand.  Let  us  struggle  to  help  or  to  mend  them,  as 
exceptions,  and  not  commit  the  folly  of  asserting  that  the 
exception  is  the  rule. 

We  all  know  that  there  are  more  women  in  these  kingdoms 
than  men,  and  not  a  little  perplexity  arises  therefrom.  But 
since  more  males  are  born  than  females,  the  inequality  is 
the  result  of  abnormal  causes  —  the  emigration,  wandering 
habits,  dangerous  trades,  over-work,  and  intemperance  of 
men.  There  are  other  countries,  especially  across  the  Ocean, 
where  the  men  greatly  outnumber  the  women.  It  is  the  first 
and  most  urgent  duty  of  society  to  remedy  this  social  disease, 
and  not  to  turn  society  upside  down  in  order  to  palliate  a 
temporary  and  a  local  want.  Certainly  not,  when  the  so- 
called  remedy  can  only  increase  the  disease  by  "debasing 
the  moral  currency"  and  desecrating  the  noblest  duties  of 
woman.  Certainly,  no  reformers  whatever  can  be  more 
eager  than  we  are  to  do  our  best  to  help  in  any  reasonable 
remedy  for  our  social  maladies,  be  they  what  they  may. 
But  the  extent  and  acuteness  of  social  maladies  makes  us 
only  more  anxious  to  defend  the  first  principles  of  human 
society  —  and  to  us  none  is  so  sacred  as  the  inherent  and 
inalienable  womanliness  of  all  women's  work. 

The  prevalent  sophistry  calls  out  for  complete  freedom  to 
every  individual,  male  or  female,  and  the  abolition  of  all 


76  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

restraints,  legal,  conventional,  or  customary,  which  prevent 
any  adult  from  living  his  or  her  own  life  at  his  and  her  private 
will.  It  is  specious;  but,  except  in  an  age  of  Nihilism,  such 
anarchic  cries  would  never  be  heard.  It  involves  the  de- 
struction of  every  social  institution  together.  The  Family, 
the  State,  the  Church,  the  Nation,  Industry,  social  organisa- 
tion, law,  all  rest  on  fixed  rules,  which  are  the  standing 
contradiction  of  this  claim  of  universal  personal  liberty  from 
restraint.  Society  implies  the  control  of  absolute  individual 
licence;  and  this  is  a  claim  for  absolute  individual  licence. 
It  is  perfectly  easy  to  find  objections  and  personal  hardship 
in  every  example  of  social  institution. 

Begin  with  marriage.  Many  married  people  would  be 
happier  and,  perhaps,  more  useful,  if  they  could  separate 
at  will.  Therefore  (the  cry  is)  let  all  men  and  women  be 
always  free  to  live  together  or  apart,  when  they  choose,  and 
as  long  as  they  choose,  without  priests,  registrars,  law-courts, 
or  scandal.  Many  parents  are  unworthy  to  bring  up  their 
children.  Therefore,  let  no  parent  have  any  control  over  his 
child.  Many  women  would  be  more  at  ease  and  perhaps 
more  able  to  work  in  their  own  way,  if  they  wore  men's 
clothes.  And  some  men,  among  the  old  and  the  delicate, 
might  be  more  comfortable  in  skirts.  Therefore,  abolish 
the  foolish  restrictions  about  Male  and  Female  dress.  And 
this  our  reformers,  it  seems,  are  preparing  to  do.  Many 
men  and  more  women  are,  at  twenty,  better  fitted  to  "come 
of  age"  than  some  men  at  thirty.  Therefore,  let  every  one 
"come  of  age"  when  he  or  she  thinks  fit.  Many  a  man 
who,  through  hunger,  steals  a  turnip  is  an  angel  of  light 
compared  with  a  millionaire  who  speculates.  Therefore, 
abolish  all  laws  against  stealing.  Many  a  foreigner  living  in 
England  knows  far  more  of  politics  than  most  native  electors. 
Therefore,  abolish  all  restrictions  applying  to  "aliens"  as  such. 


THE   FUTURE   OF   WOMAN  77 

Many  a  layman  can  preach  a  better  sermon  than  most 
priests,  can  cure  disease  better  than  some  doctors,  can  argue 
a  case  better  than  certain  barristers,  could  keep  deposits 
better  than  some  bankers,  find  a  thief  quicker  than  most 
policemen,  and  drive  a  "hansom"  better  than  some  cabmen. 
Therefore  —  it  is  argued  —  let  every  man,  woman,  and  child 
live  with  whomsoever  he  or  she  like,  wear  breeches  or  petti- 
coats as  he  or  she  prefer,  put  their  vote  in  a  ballot-box  when- 
ever they  see  one  at  hand,  conduct  divine  service,  treat  the 
sick,  plead  causes,  coin  money,  carry  letters,  drive  cabs,  and 
arrest  their  neighbours,  as  they  like,  and  as  long  as  they  like, 
and  so  far  as  they  can  get  others  to  consent.  And  thus  we 
shall  yet  rid  of  all  personal  hardships,  all  restrictions  as  to 
age,  sex,  and  competence,  and  all  public  registration;  we 
shall  abolish  monopolies,  male  tyranny,  and  social  oppression 
generally. 

The  claim  for  the  complete  "emancipation"  of  women 
stands  or  falls  along  with  these  other  examples  of  emancipa- 
tion. And  the  answer  to  it  is  the  same.  The  restriction, 
which  in  a  few  cases  is  needless,  hard,  even  unjust,  is  of 
infinite  social  usefulness  in  the  vast  majority  of  cases,  and 
"to  free"  the  few  would  be  to  inflict  permanent  injury  on  the 
mass.  To  make  marriage  a  mere  arrangement  of  two  per- 
sons at  will  would  be  to  introduce  a  subtle  source  of  misery 
into  every  home.  To  leave  women  free  to  go  about  in  men's 
clothes  and  men  free  to  adopt  women's  clothes,  would  be  to 
introduce  unimaginable  coarseness,  vice,  and  brutalisation. 
To  leave  every  one  free  to  fill  any  public  office,  with  or  without 
public  guarantee  or  professional  training,  would  open  the 
door  to  continual  fraud,  imposture,  disputes,  uncertainty,  and 
confusion.  It  is  to  prevent  all  these  evils  that  monopolies, 
laws,  conventions,  registers,  and  other  restrictions  on  per- 
sonal licence  exist.     And  the  first  and  most  fundamental  of 


78  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

all  these  restrictions  are  those  which  distinguish  the  life  of 
women  from  that  of  men. 

Not  very  many  reformers  consciously  intend  the  "emanci- 
pation" of  women  to  go  as  far  as  this.  There  is  a  great  deal 
of  playing  with  the  question,  more  or  less  honest,  more  or 
less  serious,  as  there  is  much  playing  with  Socialism,  Agnos- 
ticism, and  so  forth,  by  people  who  perhaps,  in  their  hearts, 
merely  wish  to  see  women  more  active  and  better  taught,  or 
some  of  the  worst  hardships  of  workmen  redressed,  or  the 
dogmas  of  Orthodoxy  somewhat  relaxed.  But  when  a  great 
social  institution  is  seriously  threatened  we  must  deal  with 
the  real  revolutionists  who  have  a  consistent  aim  and  mean 
what  they  say.  And  the  real  revolutionists  aim  at  the  total 
"emancipation"  of  women,  and  by  this  they  mean  that  law, 
custom,  convention,  and  public  opinion  shall  leave  every 
adult  woman  free  to  do  whatever  any  adult  man  is  free  to 
do,  and  without  let  or  reproach,  to  live  in  any  way,  adopt 
any  habit,  follow  any  pursuit,  and  undertake  any  duty, 
public  or  private,  which  is  open  to  or  reserved  to  men. 

Now  I  deliberately  say  that  this  result  would  be  the  most 
disastrous  to  human  civilisation  of  any  which  could  afflict 
it  —  worse  than  to  return  to  slavery  and  Polytheism.  If  only 
a  small  minority  of  women  availed  themselves  of  their  "free- 
dom," the  beauty  of  womanliness  would  be  darkened  in  every 
home.  Just  as  if  but  a  few  married  people  accepted  the 
legalised  liberty  of  parting  by  consent,  every  husband  and 
every  wife  would  feel  their  married  life  sensibly  precarious 
and  unsettled.  There  is  nothing  that  I  know  of  but  law 
and  convention  to  hinder  a  fair  percentage  of  women  from 
becoming  active  members  of  Parliament  and  useful  ministers 
of  the  Crown,  learned  professors  of  Hebrew  and  anatomy, 
very  fair  priests,  advocates,  surgeons,  nay,  tailors,  joiners, 
cab-drivers,  or  soldiers,  if  they  gave  their  minds  to  it.     The 


THE   FUTURE   OF   WOMAN  79 

shouting  which  takes  place  when  a  woman  passes  a  good 
examination,  makes  a  clever  speech,  manages  well  an  insti- 
tution, climbs  a  mountain,  or  makes  a  perilous  journey  of 
discovery, 'always  struck  me  as  very  foolish  and  most  incon- 
sistent I  have  so  high  an  opinion  of  the  brains  and  energy, 
the  courage  and  resource  of  women,  that  I  should  be  indeed 
surprised  if  a  fair  percentage  of  women  could  not  achieve 
all  in  these  lines  which  is  expected  of  the  average  man.  My 
estimate  of  women's  powers  is  so  real  and  so  great  that,  if 
all  occupations  were  entirely  open  to  women,  I  believe  that 
a  great  many  women  would  distinguish  themselves  in  all 
but  the  highest  range,  and  that,  in  a  corrupted  state  of  public 
opinion,  a  very  large  number  of  women  would  waste  their 
lives  in  struggling  after  distinction. 

Would  waste  their  lives,  I  say.  I  For  they  would  be  striv- 
ing, with  pain  and  toil  and  the  sacrifice  of  all  true  womanly 
joys,  to  obtain  a  lower  prize  for  which  they  are  not  best 
fitted,  in  lieu  of  a  loftier  prize  for  which  they  are  pre-eminently 
fit.  A  lower  prize,  although  possibly  one  richer  in  money, 
in  fame,  or  in  power,  but  essentially  a  coarser  and  more  ma- 
terial aim.  And  in  an  age  like  this  there  is  too  much  reason 
to  fear  that  ambition,  and  the  thirst  for  gain  and  supremacy, 
would  tempt  into  the  unnatural  competition  many  a  fine  and 
womanly  nature.  Our  daughters  continually  desire  to  see 
their  names  in  newspapers,  to  display  the  cheap  glories  of 
academic  or  professional  honours,  to  contemplate  their 
bankers'  pass-books  in  private,  and  to  advertise  in  public 
their  athletic  record. 

fiLet  us  teach  them  that  this  specious  agitation  must  ulti- 
mately degrade  them,  sterilise  them,  unsex  them.  The  glory 
of  woman  is  to  be  tender,  loving,  pure,  inspiring  in  her  home; 
it  is  to  raise  the  moral  tone  of  every  household,  to  refine  every 
man  with  whom,  as  wife,  daughter,  sister,  or  friend,  she  has 


80  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

intimate  converse;  to  form  the  young,  to  stimulate  society, 
to  mitigate  the  harshness  and  cruelty  and  vulgarity  of  life 
everywhere.  And  it  is  no  glory  to  woman  to  forsake  all  this 
and  to  read  for  honours  with  towelled  head  in  a  college  study, 
to  fight  with  her  own  brother  for  a  good  "practice,"  to  spend 
the  day  in  offices  and  the  night  in  the  "House."  These 
things  have  to  be  done  —  and  men  have  to  do  them ;  it  is 
their  nature.  But  the  other,  the  higher  duties  of  love,  beauty, 
patience,  and  compassion,  can  only  be  performed  by  women, 
and  by  women  only  so  long  as  it  is  recognised  to  be  their 
true  and  essential  field. 

It  is  impossible  to  do  both  together.  Women  must  choose 
to  be  either  women  or  abortive  men.  They  cannot  be  both 
women  and  men.  When  men  and  women  are  once  started 
as  competitors  in  the  same  fierce  race,  as  rivals  and  oppo- 
nents, instead  of  companions  and  help-mates,  with  the  same 
habits,  the  same  ambitions,  the  same  engrossing  toil,  and  the 
same  public  lives,  W'oman  will  have  disappeared,  society 
will  consist  of  individuals  distinguished  physiologically,  as 
are  horses  or  dogs,  into  male  and  female  specimens.  Family 
will  mean  groups  of  men  and  women  who  live  in  common,  and 
Home  will  mean  the  place  where  the  group  collects  for  shelter. 

The  Family  is  the  real  social  unit,  and  what  society  has  to 
do  is  to  promote  the  good  of  the  Family.  And  in  the  Family 
woman  is  as  completely  supreme  as  is  man  in  the  State. 
And  for  all  moral  purposes  the  Family  is  more  vital,  more 
beautiful,  more  universal  than  the  State.  To  keep  the 
Family  true,  refined,  affectionate,  faithful,  is  a  grander  task 
than  to  govern  the  State;  it  is  a  task  which  needs  the  whole 
energies,  the  entire  life  of  Woman.  To  mix  up  her  sacred 
duty  with  the  coarser  occupations  of  politics  and  trade  is  to 
unfit  her  for  it  as  completely  as  if  a  priest  were  to  embark 
in  the  business  of  a  money-lender.     That  such  primary  social 


THE    FUTURE    OF    WOMAN  8 1 

truths  were  ever  forgotten  at  all  is  one  of  the  portents  of  this 
age  of  scepticism,  mammon-worship,  and  false  glory.  Whilst 
the  embers  of  the  older  Chivalry  and  Religion  retained  their 
warmth,  no  decent  man,  much  less  woman,  could  be  found  to 
throw  ridicule  on  the  chivalrous  and  saintly  ideal  of  woman 
as  man's  guardian  angel  and  queen  of  the  home.  But  the 
ideals  of  Religion  of  old  are  grown  faint  and  out  of  fashion, 
and  the  priest  of  to-day  is  too  often  willing  to  go  with  the  times. 
Is  it  to  be  left  to  the  Religion  of  Humanity  to  defend  the 
primeval  institutions  of  society?  Let  us  then  honour  the 
old-world  image  of  Woman  as  being  relieved  by  man  from 
the  harder  tasks  of  industry,  from  the  defence  and  manage- 
ment of  the  State,  in  order  that  she  may  set  herself  to  train 
up  each  generation  to  be  worthier  than  the  last,  and  may 
make  each  home  in  some  sense  a  heaven  of  peace  on  earth. 


Ill 

THE  REALM   OF  WOMAN 

An  ideal  of  society  would  be  imperfect  if  it  failed  to  include 
the  part  of  Women  —  at  least  one-half  of  the  aggregate  in- 
dustry of  the  world. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  women  lead  (if  anything) 
even  more  busy  lives  than  men,  and  enjoy  less  prolonged 
periods  of  leisure. 

The  true  ideal  of  women's  work  and  life  rests  on  three 
leading  axioms :  — 

i.  That  civilisation  tends  to  differentiate  and  not  to  identify 
the  lives  of  men  and  women. 

2.  'That  the  power  of  women  is  moral  not  material  force. 

3.  That  the  material  work  of  the  world  must  fall  on  men. 

I.  Take  the  first  axiom :  —  that  civilisation  tends  to  in- 
crease the  true  difference  between  men  and  women,  and  not 
to  efface  them.  The  whole  question  really  lies  there.  A 
large  and  very  noisy  section  of  the  community  maintain 
precisely  the  contrary  —  that  civilisation  is  every  day  making 
men  and  women  more  alike,  and  that  we  ought  to  do  every- 
thing we  can  to  accelerate  and  assist  this  beneficent  law  of 
society. 

There  are  some  enthusiasts  who  go  so  far  as  to  see  a  glorious 
future  where  men  and  women  shall  differ  in  nothing  except  in 
the  fact  that  one  sex  will  be  rather  physically  stronger  than 
the  other,  that  marriage  shall  impose  on  the  mother  some 
temporary  physical  disqualifications  from  which  the  father  is 
mysteriously  exempt  —  but  apart  from  a  certain  inferiority 

82 


THE   REALM   OF   WOMAN  83 

in  muscular  strength,  and  occasional  retirement  from  public 
life  due  to  child-births  (neither  of  which  disabilities  can 
perhaps  be  eliminated  within  any  reasonable  period  of  time), 
men  and  women  are  to  be  assimilated  —  in  occupation, 
duties,  rights,  mode  of  life,  habits,  and  even  I  presume  dress. 

Civilisation  no  doubt  tends  to  bring  closer  together  many 
of  the  superficial,  or  subordinate  differences  between  the  sexes. 
It  assimilates  the  education  of  men  and  women,  it  breaks 
down  the  barrier  which  keeps  men  and  women  in  separate 
lives.  In  many  things  high  civilisation  does  bring,  not  ab- 
solute equality  between  the  sexes,  but  great  correspondence. 
It  co-ordinates  and  mutually  adjusts  the  lives  of  men  and 
women,  bringing  the  influence  of  women  to  bear  more  and 
more  into  all  phases  of  men's  lives,  destroying  the  last  traces 
of  the  subjection  of  women,  the  slavery  of  women,  the  pre- 
sumed inferiority  of  women. 

Politics,  science,  philosophy,  art,  industry,  social  economy, 
become  at  last  fields  wherein  the  part  of  women  is  fully  as 
important  as  the  part  of  men.  The  hard  and  fast  barriers 
of  a  ruder  age  are  destroyed,  and  in  all  departments  of  human 
life  the  full  emancipation  of  women  is  accomplished.  So 
far  from  being  blind  or  deaf  to  all  these  truths,  we  are  the 
first  to  hail  them  as  the  very  corner-stone  of  a  high  and  true 
social  life. 

With  higher  civilisation  the  essential  differences  of  sex 
become  ever  more  and  more  striking  and  efficient. 

It  is  a  natural  law,  not  only  of  human  nature,  but  of  all 
organic  nature.  The  higher  the  development  of  the  organism, 
the  more  highly  specialised  are  its  distinctive  qualities:  the 
more  perfectly  differenced  is  its  peculiar  function.  The 
differences  are  far  greater  between  man  and  man  in  a  highly 
cultured  society  than  they  are  in  a  savage  society.  The 
difference   between  Shakespeare  and    a  ploughman   (unless 


84  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

he  is  Robert  Burns)  is  far  greater  than  that  between  any 
two  bushmen  or  Snake  Indians.  The  differences  between 
the  civilised  man  and  child  are  far  greater  than  between  the 
savage  man  and  his  child;  the  civilised  man  is  enormously 
more  the  superior  of  the  brute  than  the  barbarian  is. 

If  civilisation  is  the  real  development  of  the  organism  in 
its  natural  and  best  way  (and  nothing  else  is,  or  can  be, 
civilisation),  civilisation  necessarily  develops  the  special 
function  of  every  organism  —  just  as  a  cultivated  rose  differs 
from  a  garden  double  dahlia  infinitely  more  than  the  dog-rose 
differs  from  the  wild  dahlia.  The  same  law  acts,  as  man  and 
woman  are  more  highly  cultivated.  Their  distinctive  functions 
are  more  and  more  marked,  even  as  their  lines  of  develop- 
ment become  more  and  more  perfectly  parallel  and  closer 
side  by  side. 

That  is,  of  course,  if  the  organisms  do  differ  to  begin  with. 
And  even  this  is  perhaps  disputed  in  an  age  of  interminable 
paradox.  We  say  frankly  that  man  and  woman  do  differ 
organically  in  profound  and  infinite  ways.  Man  and  woman 
are  different  organisms.  Since  all  human  and  moral  philos- 
ophy rests  on  a  basis  of  biological  and  cosmological  law,  on 
the  laws  of  organic  life  and  physical  conditions,  the  organic 
difference  of  man  and  woman  is  as  real  as  it  is  complete. 
It  is  so  much  the  fashion  for  a  shallow  sophistry  to  slide  over 
plain  truths  of  science,  that  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  fix  our 
minds  firmly  on  this. 

To  begin  with,  the  bodies  of  women  are  very  much  smaller, 
lighter,  softer,  weaker,  than  those  of  men  —  very  much 
more  sensitive  to  certain  shocks  and  impulses  —  and  far  less 
capable  of  very  prolonged  strain.  That  is  only  the  first 
difference.  The  next  is  that,  independently  of  size  and 
strength,  the  nervous  organisation  of  woman  differs  from  that 
of  man  (i)  in  being  much  more  subtle;    (2)  in  having  a  less 


THE    REALM    OF    WOMAN  85 

stable  equilibrium,  i.e.  in  being  more  sensitive  and  easily 
affected;  (3)  and,  principally,  in  being  much  less  in  volume, 
mass,  force.  No  juggling  can  get  rid  of  this  —  that  if  fifty 
men  were  set  to  fight  fifty  women  anywhere,  the  women  would 
be  beaten;  if  fifty  men  and  fifty  women  were  exposed  on  a 
raft  in  the  ocean  without  food  or  water,  the  men  would  sur- 
vive the  longest;  more  of  the  women  would  die  of  nervous 
prostration.  Finally,  the  female  cerebrum,  cerebellum, 
and  nerve  ganglia,  in  the  average  are  greatly  outweighed  by 
the  male. 

But  this  is  only  the  beginning  of  the  organic  difference. 
The  strictly  sexual  difference  is  truly  profound,  running  into 
the  whole  of  life,  modifying  radically  the  entire  physical, 
intellectual,  and  moral  constitution;  causing  constant  inter- 
ruption to  the  physical  and  mental  activity,  mysteriously 
connected  with  the  entire  nervous  organisation,  and  at  epochs 
of  gestation,  birth,  lactation,  menstruation,  and  decline  of 
life,  more  or  less  completely  suspending  the  ordinary  life  and 
external  activity. 

All  this  is,  however,  but  the  bare  physiological  difference. 
Yet  how  profound  it  is;  and  it  is  the  indispensable  basis  and 
nidus  of  all  mental,  moral,  social  life.  But  the  mental, 
moral,  and  social  differences  growing  out  of  these  physical 
differences  are  far  more  important.  It  would  be  a  miserable 
and  narrow  view  indeed  to  regard  the  physical  difference 
as  the  dominant,  and  all  the  rest  but  the  accidental  differences. 
It  is  a  notion,  at  once  crazy  and  brutal,  that  men  and  women 
differ  as  individuals  differ,  but  not  as  sexes  differ,  or  only 
as  sexes  differ  in  certain  physical  respects,  as  Laplanders 
differ  from  Patagonians,  or  Englishmen  from  Hottentots; 
the  one  sex  smaller,  less  strong  than  the  other,  each  having 
one  peculiar  physical  function. 

II.    Mankind,    it    is   often    forgotten,    cannot    be    divided 


86  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

into  men  and  women,  and  never,  as  a  fact,  live  as  individuals. 
An  individual  is  really  a  logical  conception,  a  subjective 
generalisation.  Individuals  can  be  thought  of;  but  individ- 
uals do  not  live.  Nervous  systems  can  be  conceived  in 
thought ;  they  do  not  exist  in  reality,  detached  living  entities. 
Men  and  women  do  not  exhaust  more  than  half  of  mankind. 
There  are  quite  as  many  children ;  and  children  are  not  men 
and  women. 

Then  again,  men  and  women  cannot  live  apart,  either  from 
each  other,  or  from  the  children.  Humanity  would  come  to 
an  end  if  they  tried.  We  cannot  count  off  so  many  million 
women,  so  many  million  men  as  similar  units,  as  we  might 
so  many  million  trees  in  a  forest,  or  so  many  soldiers  in  an 
army.  Humanity  would  not  exist  if  it  only  consisted  of  so 
many  individuals.  An  army  would  not  exist  if  it  consisted 
of  so  many  millions  of  legs  and  so  many  millions  of  arms, 
trunks,  and  heads,  and  so  forth.  Unless  the  arms,  legs, 
trunks,  and  heads  were  organically  compounded  in  living 
human  bodies  there  would  be  no  army,  even  if  it  had  the 
requisite  number  of  legs  and  arms. 

There  can  be  no  Humanity  unless  it  be  made  up  of  so 
many  persons  organically  united  in  families.  Humanity  con- 
sists of  families,  not  of  individuals.  Individuals  are  only  an 
artifice  of  logic,  for  statistical  purposes  or  the  like.  All  real 
life,  for  the  great  bulk  of  mankind,  implies  the  distribution 
of  mankind  in  families. 

If  we  keep  this  steadily  in  view  we  shall  go  right.  It  is 
only  when  we  persist  in  the  metaphysical  habit  of  thinking 
of  society  as  made  up  of  individuals  that  these  aberrations 
and  confusions  arise.  If  men  and  women  lived  in  the  world 
as  separate  units  like  trees  in  a  wood,  very  different  results 
would  follow.  But,  as  a  fact,  they  do  not,  and  cannot,  so 
live.     They  live  in  groups,  in  families,  in  households;    some 


THE    REALM    OF    WOMAN  87 

no  doubt  temporarily  detached  from  their  families,  but  all 
naturally  and  necessarily  beginning  life  in  families,  and 
always  actually  or  potentially  forming  part  of  a  household 
large  or  small,  at  least  for  a  great  part  of  their  lives. 

And  since  mankind  do  and  must  live  in  families,  and  since 
all  high  civilisation  immensely  develops  the  organisation 
of  family  life,  and  makes  each  family  more  and  more  a 
distinct  organ  in  society,  a  whole  series  of  considerations  arise 
as  to  the  management,  preservation,  protection,  education 
of  the  family;  as  to  the  respective  duties  of  father,  mother, 
son,  daughter,  husband,  wife,  sister,  brother;  as  to  the 
special  function  in  the  family  of  each  member  of  it ;  as  to 
the  relative  functions  of  young  and  old,  strong  and  weak, 
equals  and  superior,  male  and  female. 

All  this,  acting  and  reacting,  on  the  one  side  on  the  in- 
eradicable differences  of  sexual  organisation,  on  the  other 
on  the  institutions,  duties,  laws,  and  customs  of  society, 
combines  to  create  that  inexhaustible  mass  of  differences 
in  mental  aptitude,  in  emotional  character,  in  sympathy,  in 
tenderness,  in  faculty  for  arts,  in  affection,  in  power,  in 
courage,  in  patience,  in  magnanimity,  in  industry,  in  a  thou- 
sand qualities  of  heart,  brain,  and  will,  which  we  see  in  the 
highest  types  of  modern  civilisation  as  distinguishing  the 
function  of  women  from  that  of  men. 

It  is  the  lowest  type  of  savage  life  where  we  find  the  squaw 
and  the  brave  hardly  differing  except  that  the  squaw  is  less 
fit  for  war,  and  is  the  drudge  of  the  warrior  —  if  there  be  not 
a  still  lower  type  where  men  and  women  are  imagined  as 
much  alike  as  mares  are  to  horses.  The  highest  type  of 
civilised  life  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale,  introduces  us  to  all 
those  subtle  differences  of  nature,  and  those  finely  graduated 
functions  which  we  find  in  modern  life.  If  men  and  women 
were  simply  so  many  free,  equal,  independent  John  Smiths 


OS  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

and  Mary  Smiths,  but  otherwise  on  terms  as  equal,  similar, 
and  independent  as  the  men  and  women  passing  in  the  streets 
each  their  own  way,  there  might  be  ground  for  the  ultimate 
assimilation  of  men  and  women. 

But  the  streets  give  us  only  an  accidental  and  temporary 
view  of  life.  Men  and  women  come  there  for  a  special 
object,  for  a  brief  hour.  Follow  these  commonplace,  hard- 
working men  and  women  to  their  homes  —  they  all  have 
homes  —  and  then  we  find  their  real  life,  their  permanent, 
constant  life ;  the  children,  the  wife,  the  husband,  the  mother, 
the  father,  the  brother,  the  sister,  the  companion,  the  friend, 
the  servant,  it  may  be.  There  is  the  supper  to  be  get  ready, 
the  things  to  be  cleared,  the  children  to  be  put  to  bed,  the 
father  to  be  talked  with,  the  morrow's  work  to  be  get  ready, 
the  week's  spending-money  to  be  counted  up,  the  thousand 
tasks,  cares,  thoughts,  which  make  up  the  real  life  of  us  all, 
—  all  the  duties  of  affection,  patience,  courage,  ingenuity, 
and  energy,  which  constitute  man's  highest  nature. 

Now  here  we  have  a  field,  where  human  nature,  from  the 
dawn  of  social  life,  has  found  an  inexhaustible  body  of  different 
but  appropriate  functions.  It  is  found,  as  a  fact,  that  the 
mother  can  care  for  the  baby  better  than  the  father;  that 
the  father  can  stand  the  rough  work  in  the  field  better  than 
the  mother;  that  the  family  will  simply  expire  unless,  in 
the  seasons  of  weakness  for  the  child-bearing  mother,  and  the 
young  for  many  years,  the  husband  and  father  fight,  toil, 
build,  defend,  construct  for  all.  It  is  found  that  in  sickness 
no  care  of  the  man's  equals  the  woman's;  that  no  tender- 
ness of  the  man's  approaches  hers,  no  patience,  purity,  con- 
stancy, mercy,  or  long-suffering.  It  is  found,  as  a  fact,  that 
the  parts  are  best  filled  by  young  and  old,  male  and  female, 
strong  and  weak,  courageous  and  loving,  each  bearing  differ- 
ent functions. 


THE   REALM    OF   WOMAN  89 

III.  From  this  germ,  coeval  with  the  cave-bear,  have 
grown  all  the  subtle  and  infinite  gradations  and  nuances  in 
the  characters  and  minds  of  men  and  women ;  in  the  highest 
tvpes  of  civilisation  they  reach  up  to  those  profound  moral 
and  mental  differences  which  give  such  charm,  strength,  and 
reality  to  our  social  existence,  and  which  have  been  idealised 
for  us  by  the  poets  of  every  age.  They  who  talk  of  the  assimi- 
lation of  men  and  women,  the  effacing  the  petty  differences  of 
sex,  might  as  well  tell  us  that  Othello  might  have  been  a 
woman,  and  Desdemona  a  man;  that  Ophelia  and  Hamlet 
were  as  like  as  two  peas ;  that  Tom  Jones  and  Sophia  differed 
only  in  having  male  and  female  bodies;  that  it  was  a  mere 
accident  that  Jeanne  d'Arc  was  not  a  boy,  and  Julius  Caesar 
or  Oliver  Cromwell  girls.  Poetry,  philosophy,  history, 
morals,  physiology,  common  sense  —  all  teach  us,  that  close 
as  they  are,  like  as  they  are,  and  more  and  more  destined  to 
co-operate  in  one  life,  men  differ  from  women  in  all  sorts  of 
ways  —  in  moral  and  emotional  power,  in  qualities  of  heart, 
brain,  and  will,  in  aptitudes,  temper,  resources,  and  tendencies; 
that  the  bare  physiological  distinction  of  sex  is  quite  the  least 
difference,  though  it  is  the  essential  basis  of  other  differences. 
And  finally,  those  moral,  mental,  and  ethical  differences, 
though  ever  brought  closer  into  harmony  and  co-ordination, 
are  perpetually  being  accentuated  anew  by  the  progress  of 
civilisation. 

We  need  lay  down  no  absolute  law  as  to  the  respective 
powers  of  men  or  women.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that  if 
the  male  sex  had  been  formed  by  nature  (as  in  some  animals) 
the  weaker,  the  smaller,  the  more  exposed  to  periodical 
prostration,  if  men  had  the  feminine  qualities  more  pro- 
nounced than  women,  had  a  genius  for  cherishing  a  child, 
and  for  inspiring  love  and  subduing  passion,  and  if  children 
were  picked  alive  and  hearty  off  a  gooseberry  bush,  and  looked 


90  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

after  their  own  nurture  and  education  like  young  tadpoles, 
it  is  perfectly  possible  that  relatively  women  might  have  been 
the  stronger,  more  active,  courageous,  the  harder  and  coarser 
part  of  the  human  race.  They  would  realise  the  ideal  of 
our  enthusiasts  for  the  masculinity  of  women. 

But  all  this  is  a  mere  fairy  tale,  wildly  unlike  the  real 
facts  of  the  actual  world.  Civilised  society  exists;  it  is  the 
complex  issue  of  hundreds  of  centuries  of  human  institutions. 
The  parts  have  been  cast  for  millions  of  years  in  this  great 
drama  of  the  world.  Men  and  women  live  not  in  units  but 
in  pairs :  —  rather  in  groups,  in  families,  in  a  thousand  fixed 
institutions  which  it  is  too  late  now  to  destroy  and  resist. 
Men  and  women,  since  the  days  of  fig  leaves,  have  worn  a 
different  dress :  —  have  different  personal  habits,  wants, 
faculties;  have  functions,  different  though  corresponding, 
in  the  home,  and  out  of  it,  in  industry,  in  social  intercourse, 
in  war,  in  politics,  in  teaching,  in  worship. 

Such  as  these  different  functions,  institutions,  and  habits 
are  in  the  common  acceptance  of  civilised  Europe,  we  must 
accept  them  in  the  main.  Far  from  believing  them  perfect, 
and  not  falling  short  in  being  capable  of  great  development 
and  purification,  in  the  main  we  must  accept  the  idea  of 
common  sense,  that  the  parts  of  men  and  women  in  life  should 
be  so  far  different  as  is  required  by  their  differences  of  struc- 
ture, and  moral  and  mental  habit. 

Those  who  would  recast  these  respective  parts,  and  equalise 
the  practical  functions  of  the  two,  forget  that  this  is  no  simple 
question  to  be  settled  by  itself,  whether  this  or  that  woman  be 
not  as  able  to  argue  a  cause  or  make  a  speech  as  this  or  that 
man ;  but  rather  since  the  institutions  of  society,  family,  educa- 
tion, manfiers,  laws,  and  morality,  all  hang  together  and  stand 
or  fall  together,  the  real  question  is,  whether  the  ancient  pil- 
lars of  social  union  shall  be  shaken  out  of  their  sockets. 


THE   REALM   OF   WOMAN  9 1 

The  ancient  judgment  of  civilised  mankind  is  simply  that 
men  are  fitter  for  the  laborious,  rougher,  dangerous,  ex- 
hausting, and  outdoor  forms  of  industry;  women  fitter  for 
the  more  delicate,  subtle,  artistic,  domestic  forms  of  industry ; 
that  men  have  more  energy,  courage,  coolness,  and  stability ; 
women  more  affection,  tenderness,  mercy,  and  self-devotion; 
that  the  intellect  of  men  is  more  capable  of  prolonged  and 
intense  abstraction,  is  a  drier  light,  as  Bacon  says,  and  can 
be  kept  longer  in  extreme  tension  at  a  steadier  glow;  that 
the  intellect  of  women  is  more  alert,  in  quicker  correspondence 
with  the  external  world  and  the  internal  world  of  emotion,  is 
altogether  more  delicate,  more  subtle,  rapid,  and  versatile. 
All  this  is  the  A  B  C  of  human  nature,  embodied  in  a  thousand 
institutions,  customs,  and  maxims,  idealised  in  a  thousand 
types  of  art  from  Pheidias  and  Sophocles  to  Raphael  and 
Shakespeare,  Fielding,  Scott,  Miss  Austen,  and  George  Eliot. 

Who  now  wishes  to  propound  the  idle,  silly  question  — 
which  of  the  two  is  the  superior  type?  For  our  parts,  we 
refuse  to  answer  a  question  so  utterly  unmeaning.  Is  the 
brain  superior  to  the  heart,  is  a  great  poet  superior  to  a  great 
philosopher,  is  air  superior  to  water,  or  any  other  childish 
conundrum  of  the  kind?  Affection  is  a  stronger  force  in 
women's  nature  than  in  men's.  Productive  energy  is  a 
stronger  force  in  men's  nature  than  in  women's.  The  one 
sex  tends  rather  to  compel,  the  other  to  influence;  the  one 
acts  more  directly,  the  other  more  indirectly;  the  mind  of 
the  one  works  in  a  more  massive  way,  of  the  other  in  a  more 
subtle  and  electric  way.  But  to  us  it  is  the  height  of  unreason 
and  of  presumption  to  say  anything  whatever  as  to  superiority 
on  one  side  or  on  the  other.  All  that  we  can  say  is,  that  where 
we  need  especially  purity,  unselfishness,  versatility,  and  refine- 
ment, we  look  to  women  chiefly ;  where  we  need  force,  endur- 
ance, equanimity,  and  justice  chiefly,  we  look  to  men. 


92  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Out  of  this  dualism,  or  double  part  of  the  two  sexes  in 
human  life,  a  dualism  that  results  in  part  from  the  organi- 
sation of  the  sexes,  and  in  part  is  the  accumulated  effect 
of  infinite  ages  of  habit  and  social  institutions  —  there  has 
grown  up  a  complex  distribution  of  parts  in  life,  some  natural, 
we  say,  to  women,  some  natural  to  men.  And  the  future  of 
civilisation  will  enforce  and  increase  this  distribution  of  parts, 
instead  of  effacing  it,  inasmuch  as  it  tends  to  develop  the 
higher  nature  of  men  as  well  as  of  women.  In  this  age, 
when  all  possible  opinions  about  human  nature  are  thought 
equally  plausible,  and  when  all  synthetic  habits  of  treating 
human  nature  as  a  whole  are  lost  in  the  habit  of  special 
analysis,  in  solvent  criticism  of  detached  details,  it  is  argued 
that  every  distribution  of  parts  should  be  a  perfectly  open 
question,  always  to  be  decided  for  each  individual  case  by 
the  private  judgment  of  each  individual. 

This  is  all  very  well,  where  the  point  to  be  decided  is  a  simple 
question  of  personal  aptitude,  as  if  a  man  shall  go  into  the 
army  or  to  trade,  or  if  a  woman  shall  marry  or  remain  single. 
It  is  not  a  simple,  not  a  personal  matter  at  all.  People  are 
born  male  or  female,  they  have  fathers  and  mothers,  brothers 
and  sisters,  wholly  apart  from  their  personal  choice;  and, 
when  they  pair,  they  have  sons  and  daughters,  grandsons 
and  granddaughters,  and  a  multitude  of  family  and  social 
relations  grow  up  round  these  facts,  practically  irrespective 
of  their  control  or  choice. 

The  moral  and  social  value  of  institutions  depends  on  their 
being  institutions  —  creations  and  forces  of  society,  beyond 
personal  caprice,  and  independent  of  individual  fitness  in  the 
particular  case.  Institutions  would  become  centres  of  social 
contagion,  if  in  each  individual  case  the  personal  qualities 
and  suitability  of  individuals  had  to  be  separately  judged, 
and  judged  by  the  person  himself.     Marriage  differs    from 


THE    REALM    OF    WOMAN  93 

all  voluntary  unions  chiefly  because  it  is  a  union  which  has 
passed  out  of  the  voluntary  purpose  of  the  parties:  into 
one  which  society  for  its  own  sake  has  taken  into  its  own 
hands  and  on  which  it  imposes  its  own  moral  and  legal  duties. 
If  in  marriage,  husband  and  wife  were  free  at  all  times  to 
decide  that  their  union  were  no  longer  suitable,  to  abandon 
their  children,  and  to  resume  their  single  liberty,  marriage 
would  cease  to  be  a  social  institution  and  would  become 
a  bestial  cohabitation. 

The  relation  of  parent  and  child  produces  certain  moral, 
legal,  and  social  rights  and  duties  respectively,  which  society 
and  law  enforce  without  any  reference  to  individual  fitness 
or  personal  choice.  The  family  would  cease  to  exist,  if  it 
were  always  an  open  question  whether  the  parent  should 
feed,  educate,  or  control  the  child,  and  the  child  should  obey, 
love,  and  respect  its  parent.  The  family  would  come  to  an 
end  if  it  were  an  open  question  if  the  brothers  could  marry 
the  sisters,  and  whether  the  sons  could  chastise  their  mothers. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  in  extreme  cases  there  are  families 
where  it  would  be  better  for  the  parents  to  obey  the  children, 
and  where  the  children  ought  to  control  their  parents,  possibly 
where,  both  on  physical  and  moral  grounds,  it  would  be 
perfectly  wise  that  brother  should  marry  sister,  as  Egyptian 
and  Asiatic  princes  did. 

These  horrible  and  extreme  possibilities  may  show  that 
social  institutions  would  break  up  or  turn  into  poison  unless 
they  did  override  individual  exceptions  and  personal  qualities. 
The  moral  use  of  them  to  mankind  is  that  they  are  an  ex- 
ternal social  control  imposed  on  personal  licence.  Society 
would  come  to  an  end  if  its  institutions  were  always  dependent 
on  the  personal  equation  of  the  individual.  There  are  some 
men  who  no  doubt  are  more  fit  to  live  the  lives  of  women 
than  of  men,  who  would  be  healthier  and  happier  —  nay, 


94  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

more  useful  personally,  if  they  adopted  women's  gowns, 
took  charge  of  a  nursery,  spent  their  time  in  sewing  rather 
than  bricklaying.  There  are  some  women  who  would  be 
healthier,  happier,  and  certainly  more  useful,  if  they  discarded 
petticoats,  and  became  soldiers,  sailors,  cab-drivers,  and 
policemen.  But  the  world  would  be  turned  upside  down  if 
the  external  dress  and  distinct  habits  of  the  sexes  were  inter- 
changeable at  the  will  of  the  person  ;Pif  young  men  in  college 
discovered  that  the  young  fellows  with  whom  they  rowed, 
read,  and  supped,  were  girls ;  if  the  charming  woman  with 
whom  we  chatted  agreeably  at  a  party  were  really  a  soft 
young  man  of  effeminate  looks  and  tastes;  if  a  man  pre- 
sented himself  to  nurse  and  bring  up  our  children;  and  if 
stout  wenches  in  corduroys  undertook  to  carry  our  boxes  at 
a  railway,  or  enlisted  in  the  line  to  see  some  active  service. 
Human  society  would  be  dissolved.  Morality,  decency, 
family,  and  social  life  would  disappear.  And  all  this  is  to 
be  for  the  sake  of  some  exceptional  individuals,  who  pre- 
ferred to  gratify  their  own  tastes  rather  than  submit  to  social 
control,  essential  to  the  welfare  of  society.  The  moral  and 
the  social  value  of  institutions  to  mankind  depends  on  their 
being  external  forces  to  modify  and  restrain  selfish  passions, 
wholly  beyond  the  reach  of  arbitrary  personal  caprice,  and 
even  of  individual  fitness  in  particular  cases.  The  family  is 
the  grand  example  of  this.  Its  whole  moral  efficacy  rests 
on  this,  that  it  is  not  an  open  matter,  it  is  not  a  question  of 
this  or  that  one's  fitness,  his  or  her  inclination.  Husbands 
must  provide  for  their  wives,  and  protect  and  educate  their 
children,  worthy  or  unworthy.  Wives  must  do  their  duty 
by  husband  or  child,  whether  their  duty  is  irksome  or  not, 
adequately  repaid  or  not.  All  social  institutions  share  this 
character.  Their  value  consists  in  this  —  that  they  are 
external  to  the  personal  quality. 


THE    REALM    OF    WOMAN  95 

It  is  a  separate  question  what  the  specific  function  may  be, 
and  how  far  it  is  open  to  improvement.  No  social  institution 
is  perfectly  unchangeable  nor  exempt  from  the  law  of  progress. 
It  is  quite  possible  that  the  course  of  civilisation  may  gradually 
open  certain  functions  to  women  that  are  hitherto  reserved 
to  men,  and  make  interchangeable  some  parts  which  have 
been  supposed  finally  cast.  But  all  this  must  be  treated  with 
the  proper  conditions.  It  is  too  often  treated  nowadays 
as  if  it  were  a  simple  isolated  question  to  be  determined  by 
a  few  striking  exceptions. 

If  a  social  function,  hitherto  reserved  to  men,  is  to  be 
opened  to  women,  let  it  be  considered  along  with  the  whole 
scheme  of  social  functions  and  the  general  meaning  and 
necessity  for  social  functions,  and  with  the  special  reasons 
which  take  it  out  of  the  class  of  social  functions  peculiar  to 
men,  and  whether  or  not  the  boon  to  exceptional  individuals 
outweighs  the  general  social  disturbance.  What  we  repudiate 
is  the  doctrine  that  every  possible  distinction  that  can  be 
effaced  between  men  and  women  is  a  gain,  that  these 
differences  between  men  and  women  are  a  physiological 
phenomenon  important  to  the  individuals,  but  in  which  society 
has  no  concern,  and  that  the  whole  case  for  effacing  the 
specific  reserve  of  any  social  function  is  proved  when  it  shows 
that  Mary,  Maria,  and  Jane  can  do  it  as  well,  or  nearly  as 
well,  as  John,  Thomas,  and  Harry. 

Some  men,  we  know,  learn  to  sew  with  their  toes,  and 
others  to  walk  on  their  hands.  But  before  we  recommend 
the  youth  of  the  future  to  make  their  hands  and  their  feet 
interchangeable  organs,  we  had  better  consider  the  general 
effect  on  the  human  organism  of  walking  with  the  heels 
swinging  high  in  the  air,  or  of  holding  the  feet  on  a  table  at 
the  level  of  the  eye. 

The  sum  of  the  social  institutions  and  observations  whereby 


96  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  life  of  men  and  women  is  differentiated  amounts  to  this, 
that  from  the  vast  preponderance  of  lovingness  in  the  woman, 
from  her  delicacy  of  moral,  intellectual,  and  physical  nature, 
from  all  those  gifts  of  taste,  jgoodness,  adaptability,  quick- 
ness that  we  call  womanliness^the  great  superiority  of  women 
lies  in  private  life,  in  all  that  belongs  to  the  home,  to  the 
care  for  the  young,  the  suffering,  the  old,  the  afflicted  — 
that  is  to  say,  that  her  work  essentially  belongs  to  the  spiritual, 
the  affective,  the  domestic,  that  the  heart  is  her  sceptre  and 
the  family  her  empire.  [  And  it  equally  follows  from  the  great 
preponderance  of  man  in  strength,  endurance,  mass  and 
bulk  of  physical,  intellectual,  and  energetic  power,  from  his 
superior  steadiness  of  nerve  in  all  things  —  in  a  battle,  or  a 
political  crisis,  or  a  criminal  trial,  or  in  his  power  of  abstract 
tension,  in  the  making  of  an  epic  poem  or  a  railway,  a  system 
of  philosophy  or  an  operation  for  cancer  —  that  man's  sphere 
is  essentially  the  material,  that  of  public  life,  organised  in- 
dustry, the  field,  the  factory,  and  the  government. 

Men  and  women,  it  is  true,  do  not  divide  out  the  whole 
map  of  life  into  separate  tracts :  —  women,  as  it  were,  taking 
one  continent  and  men  another  —  men  taking  politics, 
women  the  home;  men  taking  education,  women  taking 
social  intercourse;  men  taking  industry,  science,  art ;  women 
taking  morality,  love,  manners,  charity.  Nothing  of  the  kind. 
Both  men  and  women  have  to  take  the  whole  field  of  life,  and 
cover  the  whole  ground.  The  difference  lies  in  this  — 
that  men  and  women  have  different  ways  of  treating  this 
field,  and  affect  it  by  different  qualities  and  forces.  Men 
have  to  do  with  the  home  as  well  as  women;  men  mostly 
finding  the  material  part  and  being  responsible  for  the  main- 
tenance of  that,  and  women  playing  a  larger  part  in  its  purity, 
happiness,  and  sweetness. 

Women  have  to  do  with  education  quite  as  much  as  men; 


THE   REALM   OF   WOMAN  97 

but  the  task  of  women  is  rather  more  with  the  education  in 
the  home,  that  of  man  more  the  education  in  the  school. 
Women  are  at  least  as  industrious  as  men,  and  their  industry 
is  quite  as  essential  to  human  comfort ;  but  it  has  less  to  do 
with  steam,  the  use  of  tools,  and  huge  factories.  Women 
have  to  do  with  politics,  when  they  form  political  opinion, 
and  set  men  a  high  ideal  of  social  duty.  So  too  they  have 
to  do  with  science,  art,  philosophy;  though  in  each  case  in 
the  more  subtle  and  moral  forms  of  these,  where  superior 
delicacy  of  perception  is  more  necessary  than  intense  power 
of  prolonged  abstraction.  Everywhere  and  in  all  things 
Woman  is  the  noblest  work  of  civilisation,  and  her  true  work 
is  to  make  a  yet  nobler  civilisation  by  infusing  into  human 
life  her  supreme  womanly  qualities  in  her  inimitable  womanly 
way. 

Let  us  hold  fast  by  this  —  that  the  great  task  before  us  is 
to  make  woman  more  womanly  and  man  more  manly,  and 
the  two  main  wants  in  this  direction  are  to  enlarge  the  op- 
portunities for  woman  to  develop  her  inexhaustible  wealth 
of  affection,  purity,  and  moral  judgment ;  on  the  side  of  the 
man  to  teach  him  the  duty  of  taking  on  himself  the  mainte- 
nance of  woman.  The  set  of  the  sophistical  Utopias  which 
seduce  some  of  the  lettered  classes  is  all  the  other  way.  It 
is  to  narrow  in  every  way  the  opportunities  of  women  to 
cultivate  their  affective  nature,  and  to  plunge  them  into  the 
industrial  mill,  or  into  the  intellectual  arena  of  the  day.  Its 
aspiration  is  to  make  woman  the  rival  of  man,  the  com- 
petitor of  man,  in  his  trade  and  his  public  life;  to  make  it 
impossible  for  him  to  take  on  himself  the  task  of  exclusively 
maintaining  woman. 

And  all  this  is  done  in  the  name  of  the  dignity,  the  freedom, 
the  true  elevation  of  woman !  Women  are  to  be  turned  into 
second-rate  men  in  public  and  industrial  life,  in  order  that 

H 


98  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

they  may  abandon  more  completely  any  pretension  to  su- 
premacy in  their  own  domestic,  moral,  and  purifying  life. 
And  the  equality  of  the  sexes  is  to  be  the  prize  of  this  gigantic 
process  of  levelling  down  one  sex  to  uniformity  with  the  other. 
The  true  ideal  of  the  dignity,  the  elevation,  and  real  emanci- 
pation of  women  is  far  different.  We  would  emancipate 
woman  from  systematic  labour  in  the  factory,  in  order  to 
leave  her  free  to  cultivate  her  moral  tenderness,  and  to  ex- 
ercise her  real  spiritual  ascendency. 

Is  it  possible  that  there  is  no  field  open  to  woman  for  the 
further  exercise  of  all  her  great  gifts,  moral,  social,  intel- 
lectual; but  that,  in  very  want  of  employment,  she  must 
needs  descend  into  the  workshop  or  the  professions  to  com- 
pete hand  to  hand  with  man  ?  It  may  be  that  in  the  corrupt, 
ill-trained,  artificial,  and  unsocial  stratum  of  the  wealthier 
society,  time  hangs  idle  on  a  woman's  hands.  But  we  cannot 
reverse  the  institutions  of  the  world  for  the  pinings  of  a  few 
misunderstood  girls,  or  satisfy  the  selfish  ambitions  bred  in 
the  morbid  air  of  a  small  artificial  class. 

It  is  true  that  man  (and  indeed  woman)  has  never  done 
justice  to  the  intellect  of  women,  that,  alone  of  the  poets 
George  Eliot  has  attempted  to  idealise  it  in  art.  It  is  true 
that  the  intellectual  powers  of  women  are  far  grander  than 
poetry,  philosophy,  or  psychology  has  yet  imagined,  im- 
mensely superior  to  the  standard  which  conventional  opinion 
presumes  to  set  up.  Humanity  forbid  that  I  should  utter 
one  word  to  countenance  the  brutal  commonplaces  as  to  the 
mental  inferiority  of  women  to  men.  To  me  the  intellectual 
capacities  of  women  seem  a  depth  always  of  unfathomed 
reach.  And  for  my  part  I  humbly  aver  that  I  never  talk 
half  an  hour  with  a  cultivated  woman  without  acknowledg- 
ing to  myself  how  much  my  education  has  been  neglected. 

And  here  in  this  intellectual  power  of  women   (under- 


THE   REALM   OF   WOMAN  99 

valued  hitherto,  we  admit)  what  a  grand  future  is  open! 
For  the  first  time  in  human  history,  we  claim  for  women  an 
education  the  same  in  all  things  as  men's,  and  vastly  in 
advance  of  any  system  of  education  actually  open  to  men. 
The  whole  range  of  the  sciences,  the  whole  field  of  human 
history,  the  masterpieces  of  poetry  of  all  ages  and  of  all 
languages,  the  great  truths  of  philosophy,  morals,  and 
religion  —  these  are  offered  to  women  —  nay,  rather  !  these 
will  be  held  indispensable  to  women's  education,  to  the 
education  of  all  women,  rich  or  poor. 

To  women  our  ideal  opens  a  new  world,  in  assigning  to 
them  so  great  a  task  in  education,  in  calling  them  to  take 
their  due  part  in  science,  in  poetry,  in  art,  in  all  forms  of 
intellectual  achievement.  Positivism,  as  a  religion,  grew 
out  of  the  profound  admiration  of  the  greatest  of  modern 
intellects  for  the  moral  and  intellectual  qualities  of  a  woman 
of  genius.  It  is  saturated,  as  a  system,  with  a  recognition 
of  women's  intellectual  powers,  and  with  the  mighty  things 
that  are  yet  in  store  for  their  achievement.  No  system  of 
philosophy,  religion,  or  morality  ever  approached  the  Posi- 
tivist  system  in  the  part  it  assigns  in  human  civilisation  to 
women's  brain.  And  we  are  told  that  we  Positivists  under- 
value the  intellect  of  women  and  would  make  of  women 
dolls,  or  images  of  conventional  worship.  We  treat  such  a 
charge  with  silent  disdain. 

We,  whose  future  demands  of  the  intelligence  of  women 
tasks  more  high  and  severe  than  any  which  in  our  ordinary 
ways  of  life  are  expected  from  men,  can  smile  when  we  hear 
that  the  true  test  of  the  mental  calibre  of  the  sex  is  to  be 
found  by  their  interest  in  the  gossip  of  the  lobbies,  or  the 
snippety  criticisms  of  third-rate  magazines.  The  intellect  of 
the  women  whom  we  honour  and  trust,  to  whose  moral  and 
mental  impulse  we  are  proud  to  surrender  our  own  intelli- 


IOO  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

gence,  needs  not  the  hall-mark  of  the  lobbies,  the  clubs,  the 
journals,  or  the  law-courts.  We  find  it  in  our  homes  brighter, 
keener,  and  truer  than  any  which  we  jostle  and  wrestle  with 
in  the  crowds  outside,  be  they  male  or  female.  Our  true 
ideal  of  the  emancipation  of  Woman  is  to  enlarge  in  all  things 
the  spiritual,  moral,  affective  influence  of  Woman ;  to  with- 
draw her  more  and  more  from  the  exhaustion,  the  contamina- 
tion, the  vulgarity  of  mill-work  and  professional  work;  to 
make  her  more  and  more  the  free,  cherished  mistress  of  the 
home,  more  and  more  the  intellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual 
genius  of  man's  life. 

This  ideal  is  not  to  be  attained  at  once.  It  is  not  to  be 
attained  at  all  by  mere  forbidding,  condemning,  restricting. 
Here,  as  ever,  Positivism  exhorts.  It  does  not  prohibit.  It 
does  not  set  up  to  judge  specific  institutions,  draw  up  amend- 
ments to  Bills  in  Parliament,  condemn  persons  and  given  acts. 
It  sets  up  on  high  an  ideal;  it  exhorts,  stimulates,  advises, 
and  warns.  It  does  not  utter  edicts  or  make  crimes.  It 
will  look  fairly  on  honest  exceptions  and  real  exemptions. 
For  my  part  I  could  imagine,  in  this  matter  of  the  sexes, 
an  exceptional  woman,  or  an  exceptional  man,  undertaking 
almost  any  unusual  function,  or  doing  almost  any  unusual 
thing,  under  real  qualifying  circumstances.  I  can  conceive  a 
woman  leading  an  army  like  Joan  of  Arc,  a  female  Lord 
Chancellor,  a  female  Poet-Laureate,  and  a  female  Prime 
Minister  —  anything  perhaps  but  exchanging  clothes,  to 
which  I  have  a  constitutional  repugnance.  But  under 
qualifying  conditions,  of  an  extraordinary  kind,  in  the  cause 
of  morality  and  society,  and  not  in  the  cause  of  personal 
ambition,  restlessness,  and  democracy.  In  the  four  thou- 
sand years  of  recorded  history  there  have  been  one  woman- 
poet  —  Sappho ;  one  heroine  in  arms  —  Joan  of  Arc ;  one 
stateswoman  —  Queen  Isabella  of  Castille. 


THE    REALM    OF    WOMAN  IOI 

We  have  all  a  home  which  we  can  labour  to  make  more 
truly  the  free  home  of  the  women,  and  the  comfort  and 
purification  of  the  men.  We  can  all  do  something  to  make 
women's  work  more  worthy  of  women,  and  less  like  that  of 
men.  We  can  all  recognise  that  the  true  future  of  women 
is  a  spiritual  and  not  a  material  development,  and  that  in 
order  to  give  women  scope  for  that  spiritual  development, 
the  material  tasks  of  the  world  must  fall  mainly  on  man  — 
that  to  force  men  and  women  like  a  herd  of  cattle  into  the 
same  undistinguished  tasks  of  material  labour  is  to  degrade 
both  man  and  woman,  intellectually,  morally,  and  even 
materially. 


IV 


THE  WORK   OF  WOMEN 

In  the  last  Essay  we  laid  down  some  general  ideas,  the 
whole  effect  of  which  was  to  show  that  the  true  aim  of  a 
higher  civilisation  would  be  to  complete  the  co-operation  of 
man  with  woman,  and  not  to  obtain  the  identity  of  man  with 
woman.  The  question  is  not  one  of  superiority  or  inferiority, 
but  of  harmony :  — ■  co-ordination  of  functions,  not  assimila- 
tion of  function.  Not  equality  in  the  crude  sense,  but  real 
correspondence. 

In  all  this  we  are  only  holding  by  the  accepted  doctrine 
of  the  world.  The  philosophers,  moralists,  poets,  and 
teachers  have  not  been  altogether  wrong  in  their  general 
estimate  of  women's  great  qualities,  though  they  have  not 
yet  done  justice  to  their  intellectual  powers.  And  as  to  func- 
tions of  women  and  their  work  in  the  world,  the  common- 
sense  view  of  modern  Western  civilisation  is  not  utterly 
misguided. 

The  whole  burden  of  proof  is  really  on  those  who  seek  to 
upset  an  immense  body  of  social  traditions  and  customs,  sup- 
ported by  an  immense  consensus  of  opinions,  by  the  vast 
majority  of  men  and  women  alike.  Mr.  Mill  has  argued  his 
case,  and  the  whole  contention  now  goes  on  this  basis,  that 
social  institutions  cannot  be  fairly  judged  until  we  have  had 
experimental  proof  of  a  society  in  which  for  a  generation  or 
two  the  old  custom  has  been  unknown ;  and  that  there  can 
be  no  harm  in  leaving  any  custom  or  institution  a  free  and 
open  question  to  be  settled  by  personal  choice  in  each  case. 


THE    WORK    OF    WOMEN  IO3 

A  wilder  and  more  anarchical  plea  cannot  be  imagined. 
Society  is  far  too  precious  a  result  of  civilisation,  and  of  far 
too  slow  a  growth,  to  be  risked  in  fantastic  experiments, 
which  may  destroy  its  life  even  before  the  experiment  is 
complete.  An  enthusiast  might  as  well  urge  us  to  try  the 
experiment  of  a  new  patent  brain  or  stomach  warranted 
never,  like  the  old  ones,  to  wear  out.  We  hear  much  about 
Vivisection  in  these  days.  But  the  worst  and  most  anti- 
social kind  of  Vivisection  is  the  claim  of  those  who  want  to 
try  experiments  on  the  living  body  of  society  in  order  to  see 
how  it  works,  and  how  much  society  can  bear  without  sink- 
ing. The  very  purpose  of  social  customs  is  to  protect 
society,  not  the  particular  individual  subject  to  it,  and  its 
whole  value  consists  in  this,  that  it  is  above  choice  or  any 
personal  peculiarity.  Mr.  Mill  and  his  followers  argue  this 
matter  as  if  it  only  concerned  the  persons  themselves  in 
question.  Such  an  idea  cuts  at  the  root  of  society  as  an 
organism. 

In  spite  of  the  regard  and  admiration  I  feel  for  Mr.  Mill, 
I  cannot  accept  his  opinion  on  this  matter  as  worth  any- 
thing. A  man  who,  as  he  was  known  to  do,  wished  to  see 
marriage  itself  modified  to  meet  personal  inclination,  had 
really  lost  all  sense  of  the  true  value  of  social  institutions. 
To  the  anarchical,  critical  temper  of  modern  discussion,  it 
seems  quite  an  obvious  thing  to  say  —  Leave  people  free  to 
decide  on  their  own  lives  and  to  follow  their  own  natural 
bent.  We  cannot  do  so  without  affecting  all  others  in  the 
same  society,  who  have  no  kind  of  wish  to  try  the  experi- 
ment. In  order  that  any  custom  may  have  any  effect  on 
conduct,  may  purify  and  steady  men's  lives,  it  must  be  a 
custom  honoured  in  the  observance,  not  in  the  breach,  and 
if  not  observed  universally,  regarded  at  least  as  a  matter  of 
common  duty.     The  continual  breach  of  any  custom,  much 


104  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

more  the  claim  even  of  a  few  to  a  right  to  break  it,  under- 
mines and  discredits  it  for  all. 

Marriage  is  the  great  example  of  this.  The  successful 
assertion,  even  by  a  small  minority,  of  a  right  to  terminate 
the  marriage  at  will  without  any  social  disapproval,  would 
soon  destroy  in  every  marriage  the  sense  of  permanence  and 
finality,  which  is  the  soul  of  marriage,  and  would  undermine 
confidence  and  devotion  between  husband  and  wife.  Every 
phase  of  the  family  would  give  us  the  same  result.  If  some 
children  asserted,  without  blame,  their  entire  independence 
of  parental  control,  all  parents  would  find  it  impossible  long 
to  control  their  children.  If  parents  were  morally  justifiable 
in  neglecting  their  children,  the  maintenance  of  their  off- 
spring would  cease  to  be  treated  as  a  natural  duty.  If  the 
sense  of  self-respect  and  respect  for  others,  which  we  call 
the  conduct  of  gentlemen,  were  displaced  by  the  habits  of 
slum-loafers,  we  should  all  have  to  be  on  our  guard  in  public 
and  in  private  against  brutality  and  personal  outrage. 

The  world  would  be  a  different  place  if  the  habit  of  per- 
sonal politeness  towards  women,  were  given  up,  little  as  it  is 
now  enforced  as  it  should  be;  and  if  women,  or  even  a 
small  group  of  women,  insisted  on  absolute  equality,  and 
ridiculed  the  concession  to  them  of  any  deference  which 
they  could  not  personally  enforce  for  themselves.  If,  when 
a  man  opened  the  door  of  a  railway  carriage  for  a  lady,  he 
ran  the  risk  of  hearing  her  say:  "Leave  it  alone,  please;  I 
can  do  it  myself!"  — he  would  lose  the  habit  of  opening  it 
altogether.  Every  one  can  see  how  profoundly  our  social 
existence  is  modified  and  exalted  by  the  rule  that  it  is  dis- 
graceful under  any  circumstances  for  a  man  to  hit  a  woman 
—  a  rule  which  goes  deep  down  into  the  roughest  and  most 
immoral  of  the  community,  and  but  for  which  some  streets 
would  be  a  very  pandemonium. 


THE   WORK   OF    WOMEN  105 

If  a  set  of  emancipated  and  ambitious  young  women,  pro- 
ceeding from  gymnastics  to  fisticuffs  and  the  art  of  self- 
defence,  loudly  repudiated  the  protection  of  this  rule,  and 
insisted  on  their  personal  right  to  hit,  and  to  hit  back,  and 
showed  themselves  well  able  to  back  up  a  word  with  a  blow 
—  ruffianism  would  be  rampant  everywhere.  The  idea  of 
disgrace  in  hitting  a  woman  being  destroyed,  the  great 
majority  of  men  and  women  would  sink  into  the  relative 
position  of  big  and  little  boys  at  school ;  and  personal  bulk- 
ing would  become  quite  a  natural  thing  in  those  ages  and 
classes  where  fisticuffs  are  in  common  use.  Bv  asserting 
absolute  equality,  the  respect  for  sex  must  be  destroyed ;  and 
much  brutality  will  be  the  result.  Something  of  the  kind 
takes  place  wherever  social  customs  are  defied.  Every  time 
a  man  or  a  woman  asserts  some  liberty  to  defy  custom,  a 
social  institution  is  snapped;  and  all  alike,  men  and  women, 
feel  their  lives  affected.  •« 

All  our  social  habits  rest  on  a  well-grounded  confidence 
that  our  relations,  friends,  and  companions  will  behave  in  a 
certain  way,  and  our  lives  are  moulded  by  this  confidence. 
The  most  continuous  influence  over  our  conduct  is  that  of 
our  mothers,  wives,  sisters,  daughters.  It  is  a  moral  and  a 
spiritual  influence  precisely  because  it  does  not  rest  on  com- 
mand, business,  experience,  and  wealth.  Admit  the  entire 
equality  and  assimilation  of  the  sexes,  and  our  wives,  mothers, 
sisters,  and  daughters  are  in  the  moral  position  of  partners 
of  a  certain  kind.  The  young  expect  from  their  mothers 
inexhaustible  watchfulness  and  affectionate  counsels;  they 
are  wont  to  look  on  their  mother's  opinion  as  higher  than 
that  of  the  world,  and  they  know  that  they  will  always  find 
her  ear  open  to  their  sorrows,  anxieties,  hopes,  and  joys.  A 
son  finds  the  best  of  fathers  a  very  different  person  from  the 
best  of  mothers:  his  relations  to  his  father  and  to  his  mother 


106  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

are  of  a  wholly  different  kind,  essential  and  beautiful  as  both 
sets  of  relations  are.  The  sister  is  wholly  different  from  the 
brother,  as  is  the  daughter  from  the  son.  Even  less  is  the 
relative  position  of  husband  and  wife  interchangeable. 

Assume  that  the  entire  equality  between  the  sexes  is 
carried  to  the  limit  that  some  dream  of.  Social  Utopias  arid 
reforms  are  best  tested  by  being  supposed  to  be  universally 
adopted  in  their  extreme  form.  Assume  that  the  equalisa- 
tion of  function  is  logically  carried  out  —  that  employments, 
professions,  habits  are  interchangeable  at  will  between  the 
sexes.  Grant  that  our  mothers,  sisters,  daughters  are  just 
as  likely  to  be  printers,  tailors,  merchants,  lawyers,  and 
doctors,  clerks,  accountants,  public  officials,  as  our  fathers, 
brothers,  or  sons.  What  would  be  the  result  ?  Our  mothers 
would  be  as  little  at  home  as  our  fathers;  they  would  come 
home  as  much  fatigued,  and  as  much  in  want  of  mere  rest; 
""they  would  be  far  too  much  absorbed  in  professional  life  to 
listen  to  the  small  troubles  of  their  children,  and  too  much 
women  of  business  to  give  way  to  sentiment.  The  mill  of 
hard  work  would  make  them  so  much  alike  that  nothing 
but  a  difference  of  name  and  of  dress  would  remain  to  re- 
mind us  that  the  one  were  the  women  and  the  other  the 
men  of  our  household  —  though  why  the  difference  of  name 
and  dress  should  be  retained,  when  the  moral  characteristics 
were  gone,  it  is  difficult  to  see. 

This  is  true  not  merely  of  our  family  life,  but  in  all  forms 
of  our  social  intercourse.  We  are  accustomed  to  treat 
women  everywhere  in  public,  in  private,  in  society,  in  busi- 
ness relations,  with  a  certain  respect  and  deference,  which, 
weak  as  it  is,  imperfect  as  it  is,  is  the  living  symbol  to  men 
of  the  moral  influence  of  women,  to  develop  which  is  the 
most  precious  mission  of  civilisation.  That  pure  and  sacred 
acknowledgment  by  the  stronger  of  the  moral  claims  of  the 


THE   WORK   OF   WOMEN  107 

purer  sex  would  disappear  the  day  that  men  continually 
found  women  in  desperate  competition  with  them  for  ma- 
terial power,  when  they  found  women  unsexed  by  exhaust- 
ing labour  and  professional  anxieties,  rejecting  tenderness, 
persuasion,  spiritual  earnestness  and  superior  unselfishness 
as  their  instrument  of  power,  and  claiming  their  power  by 
force,  practical  success,  and  the  cruel  test  of  competition. 

How  strangely  some  women  deceive  themselves  in  fancy- 
ing that  they  can  win  in  the  battle  of  life  by  their  own  strength, 
and  yet  not  sacrifice  the  moral  ascendency  which  centuries  of 
civilisation  have  secured  to  them.  Blind  and  petty  ambition  ! 
They  cannot  have  it  both  ways.  If  only  a  certain  propor- 
tion of  women  succeeded  in  claiming  their  right  to  fight  it 
out  with  men  on  equal  terms,  to  sacrifice  family,  and  all 
the  duties  of  family,  to  sacrifice  all  that  is  exclusively  woman's 
privilege,  in  order  to  win  by  their  own  energy  industrial  and 
professional  careers  for  themselves,  the  charm  which  it  has 
cost  Chivalry,  Religion,  and  Modern  Refinement  a  thousand 
years  to  build  up,  would  be  snapped  at  once;  and  men  in 
the  mass  would  come  to  regard  women  as  mere  female 
competitors. 

Can  we  doubt  the  result?  Women,  as  physically  the 
slighter,  and  less  capable  of  prolonged  strain,  must  be 
beaten.  Their  very  qualities  of  heart  and  brain,  their 
tenderness,  unselfishness,  and  refinement  of  organisation 
would  be  a  hindrance  to  them  in  the  fight;  the  harder, 
stronger,  less  affectionate  sex,  free  as  men  are  from  the 
handicap  of  periodic  nervous  prostration,  would  reassert 
their  old  brutal  reign  of  force.  The  barbarism  of  earlier 
times  would  return;  and  the  personal  ambition  of  a  few 
unwomanly  women  would  have  plunged  their  sex  again  into 
the  horrible  slavery  of  a  subject  and  despised  order. 

After  all,  civilisation  has  been  in  the  main  right  in  assign- 


108  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

ing  to  Women  private,  not  public  life,  home  industry,  not 
professional  industry,  spiritual  work,  not  material  work. 
There  is  ample  room  for  such  work,  for  double  the  num- 
ber of  women  that  exist.  The  possibilities  of  more  woman- 
liness in  the  world  are  boundless.  There  is  in  every  home 
an  infinite  capacity  for  moral  and  spiritual  elevation,  if  only 
the  women  in  it  were  free  to  develop  their  own  nature  with- 
out exhausting  labour  and  cares.  Where  is  the  family  which 
would  not  be  the  better  for  the  women  in  it  being  wholly 
devoted  to  raise  its  whole  standard  of  life  and  not  to  earn- 
ing their  living?  Where  is  the  society  of  which  it  can  be 
said  that  it  has  too  much  affection,  tenderness,  purity,  and 
self-devotion  ?  The  function  of  woman  is  not  material  pro- 
duction, but  goodness,  beauty,  and  truth. 

We  sometimes  hear  in  well-to-do  homes  that  the  women 
in  it  are  dying  of  ennui,  want  of  occupation,  and  objectless 
lives.  Such  homes  are  the  creation  of  an  artificial  society. 
The  immense  mass  of  the  people  in  city  or  in  country  would 
smile  in  derision  to  have  the  like  imputed  to  them.  Who 
ever  heard  of  the  working  family  in  cottage  or  lodging  where 
the  women  could  find  nothing  to  do  ?  In  the  great  maze  of 
our  toiling  millions  the  women,  alas !  have  too  much  to  do, 
and  the  drudgery  of  household  labour  falls  with  terrible 
weight  on  the  younger  girls  and  on  the  nursing  mother.  But 
why  does  it  so  fall  ?  Because  for  the  most  part  so  many  of 
the  adult  women  are  competing  with  their  own  fathers  and 
brothers  in  the  factory  and  the  shop.  In  the  rich  and 
governing  classes  the  social  distractions  of  an  artificial  life 
leave  the  women  no  leisure  for  true  and  high  careers.  It 
may  be  that  in  classes,  sufficiently  rich  to  be  freed  from 
labour  yet  not  rich  enough  to  enter  the  arena  of  society, 
time  may  hang  heavy  on  the  hands  of  many  women,  who 
would  think  it  a  degradation  to  mix  with  their  poorer  neigh- 


THE    WORK    OF    WOMEN  IOQ 

bours,  and  who  have  not  enough  education  to  fashion  a 
cultivated  life  for  themselves.  But  this  is  surely  the  preju- 
dice of  an  age  which  breeds  the  inhuman  distinctions  of 
class,  and  whose  true  education  is  still  so  deplorably  short 
of  our  hopes  and  our  ideals. 

And  are  these  evils  —  cruel  work  wrung  from  the  mother 
and  the  girl  children,  and  a  low  and  feeble  education  — ■ 
both  the  obvious  results  of  exacting  labour  —  to  be  cured 
by  increasing  that  labour,  by  withdrawing  from  the  home 
even  more  adult  women,  and  in  forcing  on  all  women,  young 
and  old,  the  grinding  task  of  earning  their  daily  bread  ?  It 
would  seem  like  madness,  this  plan  of  curing  social  evils  due 
to  overwork  in  women  by  subjecting  more  women  to  this 
overwork.  It  is  as  if  in  a  society  avowedly  suffering  from 
poverty  due  to  over-population,  we  were  to  seek  to  escape 
from  that  poverty  by  breeding  more  children  to  earn  a  small 
wage.  The  relief  that  the  individual  or  each  separate 
family  may  get  by  adding  its  women  and  children  to  the 
wage-earners  is  a  direct  increase  of  the  distress  to  all  other 
families  by  multiplying  the  supply  of  labour,  and  labour  at 
lower  rates. 

Nothing  is  a  more  certain  economic  fact  than  this :  that 
women's  labour  is  necessarily  (in  the  rule  of  competition) 
cheaper  labour  than  men's.  And  that  for  three  reasons: 
the  first,  that  women  can  maintain  their  strength  on  less 
food  and  cheaper  food  than  men ;  secondly,  women,  from 
their  greater  dependence  on  family  life,  cannot  combine  and 
enforce  good  wages  so  easily  as  men  can ;  thirdly,  that, 
whilst  families  hold  together  at  all,  women  will  look  for  at 
least  a  part  of  their  maintenance  to  the  men  of  their  families. 
Accordingly,  women's  wages  are  hardly  ever  the  strict  market 
value  of  their  labour.  Women's  wages  are  to  a  great  extent 
extras,  supplementary  to  their  maintenance.     They  are  pay- 


HO  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

ments  in  aid  of  their  home  support.  And  just  as  all  wages 
are  kept  down  by  systematic  poor-relief  to  the  able-bodied, 
so  women's  wages  are  kept  down  by  the  almost  universal 
practice  of  their  being  partly  at  least  maintained  by  men,  in 
their  families  or  out  of  families. 

Either  they  actually  are,  or  they  expect  to  be,  in  part  at 
least,  maintained  by  men,  as  wives,  daughters,  sisters,  or,  it 
may  be,  companions.  For  let  us  not  shirk  this  very  horrible 
fact  that,  in  all  large  cities  and  factories  and  workshops, 
where  men  and  women  are  crowded  together  and  the  family 
life  is  crushed,  a  very  serious  proportion  of  the  women, 
chiefly  in  the  lowest  and  most  miserable  of  all  classes,  but  to 
some  extent  in  the  well-to-do,  and  even  fashionable  classes 
of  industry,  supplement  their  wages  from  time  to  time  by 
the  assistance  of  men,  under  conditions  very  different,  more 
or  less  immoral,  but  all  of  them  degrading,  even  where  they 
fall  short  of  open  vice.  I  make  no  charge  against  any  class, 
least  of  all  do  I  impute  this  evil  to  women  more  than  the 
men,  but  it  would  be  idle  to  shrink  from  the  knowledge  that 
the  degree  in  which  immoral  means  of  living  are  open  to 
working  women  seriously  affects  even  their  wages. 

Add  to  this  immoral  support,  the  wholesome  and  right 
maintenance  of  women  by  the  men  of  their  families,  and  we 
get  a  combination  of  causes,  which,  joined  to  their  less 
physical  and  political  energy,  is  certain  to  reduce  the  wages 
of  women,  if  not  below  their  true  market  value,  below  their 
true  industrial  equivalent.  Hence  we  find  that  in  great 
cities  and  the  lowest  types  of  industry,  wages  are  perma- 
nently depressed  below  the  level  of  subsistence  in  health; 
because  a  large  proportion  of  the  women  employed  in  them 
eke  out  existence  by  other  casual  or  irregular  means;  or, 
inasmuch  as  they  may  do  so,  they  struggle  on  on  the  verge  of 
starvation. 


THE   WORK   OF   WOMEN  III 

It  may  be  said  that  this  evil  in  its  worst  form  may  be 
remedied  by  improved  morality  and  higher  civilisation.  But 
the  increased  supply  of  women's  labour  only  tends  to  ad- 
journ a  higher  civilisation.  And  for  the  honour  of  human 
nature  let  us  remember  that  the  support  which  (over  and 
above  any  earnings)  women  receive  from  men  on  immoral 
grounds  is,  after  all,  but  partial  and  occasional,  acting  in 
exceptional  and  unfortunate  industries  only.  The  principal 
forms  of  such  support  are  certainly  not  only  moral  but  the 
most  sacred  of  duties :  —  the  support  of  the  wife,  the  daugh- 
ter, the  sister,  by  the  husband,  father,  or  brother.  Need  we 
discuss  the  suggestion  which  none  but  fanatics  indeed  could 
advance,  that  the  true  remedy  will  be  to  abolish  all  claims 
or  habits  of  the  kind  ?  Are  we  to  be  told  that  the  wages  of 
women  will  rise  to  their  just  economic  level  when  every 
woman  is  felt  to  be  as  much  bound  to  maintain  herself  as 
any  man  is  now,  and  when  women  do  not  claim  support 
from  the  men  of  their  families,  more  than  the  men  now 
claim  it  of  the  women? 

Happily  for  human  nature  this  extravagant  sophism  is 
impossible  to  practise,  at  any  rate  so  long  as  families  exist. 
The  bulk  of  men  will  still  continue  to  maintain  their  own 
daughters  as  well  as  their  wives,  and  to  look  on  their  main- 
tenance as  a  duty.  And  as  the  bulk  of  their  daughters  will 
soon  be  passing  into  the  position  of  wives,  and  the  minority 
alone  of  women  have  to  look  to  wage-earning  as  their  per- 
manent condition,  it  follows  that  under  the  rule  of  competi- 
tion, the  wages  of  women  will  be  always  depressed.  Nor  is 
it  only  the  rule  of  competition  to  which  this  applies.  Whether 
under  a  wages-system,  or  competition,  or  the  rule  of  equity, 
or  even  in  socialism,  the  wages  of  women  will  be  lower  than 
those  of  men,  inasmuch  as  in  the  bulk  of  industries  their 
work  is  not  economically  so  valuable  as  that  of  men. 


112  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Again  comes  in  the  law  of  inferior  physical  strength, 
greater  liability  to  the  influence  of  climate,  exposure,  and 
privation,  and,  above  all,  inferior  degree  of  steadiness  of 
physical  equilibrium.  No  argument  about  rights  can  ever 
make  women's  labour  in  the  majority  of  industries  worth  as 
much  as  men's  in  the  simple  economical  valuation.  And 
whilst  that  is  the  case,  they  cannot  fairly  expect  so  large  a 
share  of  the  profit.  Every  step  then  that  we  take  towards 
increasing  the  proportion  of  women's  work  in  the  joint  in- 
dustry of  any  society  is  a  step  towards  decreasing  the  profit 
which  the  workers  can  obtain. 

It  is  certainly  not  in  the  way  of  positive  vice  alone  that 
the  evils  are  seen  of  the  indiscriminate  work  of  women  and 
men.  Where  vice  is  happily  prevented,  and  where  the 
women  themselves  are  innocent  and  blameless,  they  have  to 
endure,  in  a  crowded  factory  or  shop,  unless  under  circum- 
stances unusually  fortunate,  much  that  is  coarse,  contaminat- 
ing, and  repulsive.  I  am  very  far  from  denying  that  there 
are  shops  and  factories  where  the  girls  are  as  free  from 
harm  as  in  any  home  in  the  world.  But  they  are  rare.  I 
speak  with  some  more  than  ordinary  means  of  knowledge. 
Friends  of  my  own  in  our  Body  have  told  me  of  their  re- 
pugnance to  expose  their  daughters  to  such  an  ordeal.  Speak- 
ing generally,  I  assert  without  fear  of  contradiction  that  the 
factories,  crowded  with  men  and  women  in  indiscriminate 
work,  where  all  idea  of  home  retirement  and  of  personal 
supervision  is  out  of  the  question,  almost  necessarily  expose 
the  women  to  coarseness,  which  all  but  the  very  degraded 
succeed  in  excluding  from  their  homes,  and  which  is  fraught 
with  danger  and  pollution  in  any  case. 

There  are  in  Europe  —  in  Russia,  Italy,  and  Spain  — 
districts,  cities,  and  industries,  where  the  limit  of  the  equal 
employment  of  men  and  women  is  nearly  reached  in  prac- 


THE   WORK   OF   WOMEN  II3 

tice;  where  girls,  young  women,  and  mothers,  as  a  rule,  are 
employed  as  much  as  men.  What  do  we  see?  Precisely 
what  we  have  just  described.  The  family  has  almost  ceased 
to  exist  as  a  moral  and  civilising  power.  The  home  is  a 
mere  dormitory  or  common  lodging-house,  where  the  mother 
and  the  father  are  merely  the  oldest  woman  and  oldest  man, 
and  where  for  that  very  reason  they  are  the  least  considered. 
The  women  are  merely  hands  who  get  smaller  wages,  get 
the  worst  of  it  in  a  struggle  about  wages,  privileges,  or  profits, 
and  who  are  physically  thrust  into  the  position  of  a  weaker 
race.  They  are  nearly  as  rough,  as  coarse,  as  unhandy  as 
the  men.  They  know  quite  as  little  of  household  comfort, 
of  the  children's  health^f  the  grace  and  sweetness  of  a 
woman's  life.  The  children  are  born  ill-nourished,  and  they 
grow  up  without  care,  or  they  die  of  sheer  mismanagement, 
because  the  women  who  bore  them  are  rather  their  dams 
than  their  mothers  —  are  not  mothers  in  a  moral  and  truly 
human  sense. 

As  to  the  influence  of  the  woman  on  the  men  within  her 
home,  as  to  her  exerting  a  high  spiritual  and  moral  power, 
as  wife,  daughter,  or  sister,  the  very  materials  for  it  do  not 
exist.  She  has  no  claim,  or  title,  or  thought  of  such  a  force ; 
nor  would  he  submit  to  it  in  any  form.  The  males  live  in 
their  homes  beside  the  females,  whom  they  find  fellow- 
workers,  only  fit  for  lower  wages,  requiring  less  food,  and 
easily  coerced  by  force  if  necessary,  but  otherwise  as  com- 
pletely mates  in  work  as  any  man  in  the  whole  shop.  To 
this  ideal  are  they  tending  who  are  striving  to  thrust  more 
women  into  work. 

The  immediate  question  of  our  day  is  not  so  much  the 
withdrawing  women  from  work,  as  it  is  the  checking  of  the 
still  further  degradation  of  women  by  urging  more  of  them 
into  systematic  industry  of  the  factory  kind,  under  the  two- 


114  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

fold  impulse  of  the  desire  of  gaining  an  income,  and  mis- 
taken ideas  of  superior  merit  of  women  earning  their  own 
living.  The  first  task  of  a  rational  system  of  life  is  to  stem 
the  increase  of  the  evil.  Let  us  begin  by  appealing  to  men 
and  women  alike  to  withdraw  at  least  the  wives  and  mothers 
from  the  factory  and  the  workshop.  The  evils  of  this,  the 
physical,  moral,  economical  evils  of  taking  wives  and  mothers 
from  their  homes  to  plunge  them  in  the  mill,  are  so  plain 
and  manifold  that  we  need  hardly  argue  for  the  duty  of 
resisting  it.  It  would  be  something  if  our  generation  shall 
have  established  this/  that  the  place  of  the  wife  and  the 
mother  is  in  her  home;  that  the  first  duty  of  the  husband 
and  the  father  is  to  maintain  his  wife  and  the  mother  of  his 
children. 

As  the  vast  majority  of  women  must  in  time  expect  to  be 
wives,  as  it  is  too  ridiculous  for  argument  to  pretend  that  a* 
wife  is  degraded  by  being  supported  by  her  husband,  how 
forced  and  artificial  is  the  pretence  that  it  belongs  to  the 
dignity  of  women  to  maintain  themselves  by  their  own 
exertions.  A  daughter,  a  sister,  an  aunt,  a  mother,  or  a 
widow,  is  no  more  humiliated  by  being  supported  by  the 
men  of  her  household  than  the  wife  who  is  supported  by  her 
husband,  or  the  schoolmaster,  or  priest,  or  magistrate,  who 
are  all  maintained  by  those  for  whom  their  lives  are  devoted. 
The  women  so  supported  are  set  free  to  other  and  nobler 
duties:  to  bring  comfort,  health,  purity,  and  affection  into 
the  homes ;  to  teach,  to  brighten,  to  moralise  the  household ; 
to  make  the  men  feel  how  little  their  hard  life  of  toil  repre- 
sents the  whole  of  man's  existence,  how  infinitely  nobler  is  a 
worthy  home  than  the  workshop  or  the  market-place. 

Life  would  be  a  poor  gift,  civilisation  would  be  a  doubt- 
ful progress,  if  the  whole  human  race  were  indefinitely 
condemned   to  incessant  toil ;    if  one  day  were  to  succeed 


THE   WORK   OF   WOMEN  115 

another,  one  year  follow  the  last,  bringing  only  the  prospect  of 
the  same  unbroken  struggle  for  existence.  Industry  and 
effort  is  man's  lot,  and  industry  as  a  basis  of  our  life  is  an 
indispensable  necessity.  But  the  whole  of  man's  life  is  not 
mere  industry;  the  whole  of  mankind  are  not  dedicated  by 
nature  to  toil.  Our  moral,  intellectual,  artistic,  emotional 
life  have  their  claims.  One  half  of  mankind  are  not  too 
many  to  dedicate  to  these.  In  any  rational  view  of  an 
organised  and  highly  developed  society,  each  separate  func- 
tion needs  a  separate  organ,  each  social  duty  is  best  performed 
by  a  special  order,  trained  and  habituated  to  it  from  youth. 

In  the  lowest  types  of  society  every  kind  of  task  falls  in- 
discriminately on  every  member,  on  men  and  women,  old 
and  young  alike.  The  rude  implements  and  fabrics,  the 
necessities  of  food,  clothing,  and  shelter,  are  roughly  and 
wastefully  furnished  by  the  ill-disciplined  labour  of  any  man 
or  any  woman  in  the  tribe.  The  tribesmen  fish,  hunt, 
collect  food,  build  huts,  fight,  dance,  and  chant  their  rude 
songs  each  in  turn.  Civilisation  gives  us  men  trained  to  do 
each  of  these  as  a  separate  profession.  In  time,  society  forms 
its  fishermen,  its  builders,  its  manufacturers,  its  husband- 
men, its  soldiers,  its  teachers,  its  artists,  poets,  thinkers, 
priests.  It  separates  the  home  from  the  factory,  the  govern- 
ment from  the  public,  labour  from  education,  moral  and 
spiritual  duties  from  material  and  temporal  duties. 

The  same  distinction  of  function  applies  in  the  highest 
civilisation  to  age  and  to  sex.  It  is  the  business  of  the  young 
to  learn,  of  the  old  to  advise,  of  the  adult  to  work.  It  is  the 
business  of  the  Home  to  purify,  to  moralise,  and  to  elevate ; 
of  the  School  or  the  Church  to  teach  and  guide.  And  thus 
it  is  the  business  of  adult  men  to  supply  all  material  produc- 
tion. It  is  the  privilege  of  Women  to  infuse  into  life  a  moral 
and  spiritual  culture. 


Il6  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Our  ideal  then  is  that  the  whole  organised  labour,  out- 
side the  home,  that  is,  the  mass  of  factory  work,  should  fall 
as  a  rule  on  the  men ;  that  the  activity  of  women  as  a  rule 
should  be  exercised  in  the  home.  But  this  does  not  in  any 
way  imply  that  women  are  debarred  from  intellectual, 
social,  professional,  or  political  work,  or  that  the  work  so 
done  is  in  any  way  less  in  amount,  or  inferior  in  dignity. 
Nor  does  it  imply  that  there  is  not  an  immense  amount  of 
industry  pure  and  simple  open  to  them  in  all  those  depart- 
ments which  admit  of  household  employment  organised  more 
or  less  in  the  type  of  a  home.  But  with  education,  art, 
science,  philosophy,  the  organisation  of  charity,  or  mutual 
help,  the  care  of  health  on  all  its  sides,  the  comfort  of  the 
desolate,  the  ignorant,  and  the  friendless,  in  the  refinement 
of  life,  and  the  improvement  of  social  culture,  in  the  forma- 
tion of  opinion,  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  education  of  men 
—  the  work  of  women  is  absolutely  boundless  in  extent. 

I  feel  very  deeply  that  this  is  at  most  an  ideal  —  an  ideal 
impossible  within  any  reasonable  space  for  this  generation 
or  the  next.  I  know  very  well  that  the  great  body  of  our 
fellow-citizens  are  no  more  able  to  withdraw  the  women  of 
their  families  from  work  in  the  factory  and  support  them  at 
home  than  they  are  to  devote  themselves  to  a  life  of  simple 
mental  culture.  And  it  would  sound  like  an  unfriendly 
mockery  if  I  told  them  it  was  their  duty  to  do  what  they  are 
quite  unable  from  necessity  to  accomplish.  We  would  im- 
pose no  formal  obligations  on  persons,  nor  would  we  lay 
down  absolute  laws.  We  ask  for  no  Act  of  Parliament,  no 
positive  prohibition  of  any  kind.  We  appeal  to  opinion,  to 
the  slow  operation  of  the  collective  conscience  of  the  people. 
Fortunately  the  difficulty  is  one  that  is  felt  in  the  individual 
case,  not  in  the  aggregate.  It  is  difficult  for  this  or  that 
household  to  surrender  the  earnings  of  the  girls.     But  the 


THE    WORK   OF    WOMEN  II 7 

general  cessation  of  women's  labour  must  inevitably  increase 
the  wages  of  men.  The  family  would  receive  the  same 
amount,  though  the  men  and  the  women  of  it  would  not  be 
competing  against  one  another,  and  mutually  reducing  each 
other's  earnings. 

There  is  great  talk  now  about  the  unemployed,  gluts  of 
the  labour  market,  and  such  remedies  as  emigration,  or 
drawing  off  the  numbers  of  those  who  compete  for  work. 
There  would  be  little  anxiety  on  that  score,  if  women  were 
not  competing  with  men  in  every  labour  market  of  Europe. 
All  anxiety  about  over-population,  lack  of  employment,  and 
the  superabundance  of  labourers,  are  the  direct  creation  of 
our  wild  industrial  anarchy,  the  competition  for  the  cheapest 
labour,  and  the  inevitable  collapse  of  the  old  traditions  of 
the  Family.  To  seek  relief  in  a  glut  of  the  labour-market 
and  consequent  low  wages  in  actually  increasing  the  numbers 
of  the  workers  by  thrusting  more  women  into  the  places  of 
men,  is  like  curing  dipsomania  by  more  drink. 

Whatever  is  done  will  have  to  be  done  gradually  and 
partially,  and  few  of  us  but  could  do  something  at  once  to 
take  some  step  in  advance.  Obviously  the  first  and  urgent 
duty  is  to  withdraw  from  factory  labour  the  mother  and  the 
wife.  That  I  take  even  now  to  be  moral  obligation  of  the 
first  order.  The  next  step,  I  think,  would  be  to  withdraw  the 
younger  rather  than  the  older  unmarried  women,  as  their 
independence  is  less  and  their  future  more  undetermined. 
Then  it  is  plain  that  work  in  a  huge  indiscriminate  factory, 
with  men  and  girls  side  by  side,  is  far  more  unnatural  and 
destructive  of  moral  life  than  work  in  a  smaller  shop,  organised 
more  or  less  on  a  domestic  type.  Obviously  too  the  hard 
and  more  masculine  forms  of  labour,  in  the  field,  or  the  mine, 
the  brickyard,  and  the  forge,  are  far  more  injurious  than  the 
more  delicate  work  of  scissors,  needle,  or  lace.     As  a  rule, 


1 1 8  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  use  of  machinery  driven  by  steam  is  a  more  unnatural 
form  of  work  for  women  than  a  simple  tool  worked  by  hand, 
and  as  a  general  rule  the  fewer  and  the  simpler  the  tools,  the 
more  congenial  the  work. 

Domestic  service  in  a  family,  evil  as  are  some  of  its  inci- 
dents now,  and  shamefully  as  its  high  duties  and  obligations 
are  misunderstood,  is  sound  and  right  in  itself.  All  that  is 
needed  is  to  inform  it  with  a  human  spirit,  and  to  bring 
dignity  and  goodness  to  bear  on  this  much-perverted  institu- 
tion. But  in  domestic  service  purified  and  regenerated  by 
the  spirit  of  humanity  is  a  true  and  vast  field  for  honourable 
women's  work.  Therein  she  does  not,  or  at  least  should  not, 
pass  out  of  the  family.  She  passes  for  a  season  into  another 
family,  or  she  would  do  so,  if  more  worthy  ideas  of  the  domes- 
tic relation  existed.  With  education  in  all  its  forms,  with 
art,  with  the  care  of  the  young,  the  friendless,  the  sick,  I  can 
hardly  see  that  women's  occupation  can  ever  be  unwomanly, 
whatever  form  it  may  take,  or  however  great  a  training,  re- 
sponsibility, and  labour  it  involve. 

Of  the  professions  strictly  so  called,  of  the  directing  func- 
tions of  wealth,  or  power,  the  same  reasoning  applies.  As 
doctors,  artists,  poets,  philosophers,  leaders  of  political  and 
social  movements,  there  are  doubtless  occasional  spheres 
for  a  few  exceptional  women.  The  immense  value  of  such 
services  no  one  can  underrate.  But  the  institutions  of  society 
can  hardly  be  arranged  to  meet  a  few  remarkable  exceptions. 
It  is  highly  desirable  that  poets  and  philosophers  should 
exist;  but  we  should  think  it  highly  inexpedient  to 
bring  up  a  young  man  as  a  poet  or  a  philosopher  and  teach 
him  to  regard  it  as  a  professional  career.  Poeta  nascitiir 
non  fit.  And  the  woman  of  genius,  as  doctor,  philosopher, 
artist,  or  leader,  will  make  herself  felt  without  our  turning 
society  upside  down  on  the  chance  of  producing  her. 


THE    WORK    OF    WOMEN  II9 

The  cry  of  our  day  is  to  make  careers  for  women  by  effac- 
ing the  allotment  of  functions  to  men  and  women  by  the  cus- 
tom of  society.  The  women  of  rare  genius  will  make  their 
own  career  without  our  help :  the  Sappho,  Aspasia,  Artemisia, 
Joan  of  Arc,  the  Madame  de  Stael,  the  George  Eliot  of  her 
age,  will  always  be  found  and  recognised  by  their  contempo- 
raries. For  myself  I  deny  that  the  average  of  women  can 
ever  make  as  capable  heads  of  a  great  manufacture,  or 
bank,  or  public  office,  or  be  as  good  lawyers,  professors, 
statesmen  as  the  average  of  men.  I  do  not  deny  that  they 
have  adequate  intellectual  power,  but  they  have  not  the  same 
physical  power  —  and  morally,  physically,  and  intellectually 
they  have  not  the  same  lasting  power  and  unvarying  steadi- 
ness of  nerve  force  that  men  have  in  business.  Many  women 
are  quite  equal  to  many  men  in  the  ordinary  conduct  of 
intricate  business  at  ordinary  times.  But  all  women  are 
liable  to  one  fatal  disqualification  for  high  professional 
duties  —  i.e.  moral  and  physical  collapse  under  special 
strain  —  failure  of  nerve  power,  and  of  complete  self-control 
at  critical  moments.  And  this  defect,  not  important  in  the 
minor  and  less  organised  forms  of  work,  becomes  in  the 
more  difficult  kinds  of  professional  duty  a  danger  so  great 
that  it  may  ruin  a  life  of  toil,  and  destroy  the  creation  of  years. 

But  the  true  ground  for  the  allotment  of  special  careers 
to  men  and  to  women  lies  not,  in  truth,  in  this  line.  It  is 
because  women  are  imperatively  needed  in  another  career; 
because  [the  efforts  of  all  the  women  in  the  world  are  not 
enough  to  perform  it  adequately.  The  career  of  women  is 
to  dignify  and  elevate  the  life  of  man;  nor  is  there  any  in- 
tellectual quality  whatever,  or  any  element  of  character, 
which  may  not  find  ample  scope  for  its  highest  efforts  in 
the  task.  There  is  no  side  of  life  which  is  not  open  to  it, 
be  it  politics,  art,  science,  society,  manners,  or  religion.     All 


120  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

need  the  purifying  influence  of  truly  competent  women. 
Is  not  this  a  career  which  may  satisfy  the  ambition  of  any 
one  man  or  woman  ?  What  is  the  meaning  of  careers  being 
closed,  when  the  whole  range  of  human  education,  the  whole 
field  of  philosophy,  science,  history,  poetry,  are  open  to  all, 
be  they  men  or  women  ?  Are  women  as  a  rule  so  saturated 
and  satiated  with  all  the  knowledge  of  mankind,  is  woman's 
education  so  complete  and  universal,  that  they  must  have 
fresh  worlds  to  conquer? 

It  seems  to  me  that  women  should  bless  the  leisure  which 
has  opened  to  those  who  have  leisure  such  glorious  oppor- 
tunities. It  seems  to  me  a  nobler  ambition  to  have  reached 
a  high  standard  of  mental  culture  than  to  conduct  a  law-suit 
or  manage  a  bank.  I  should  think  it  a  nobler  ambition  to 
infuse  a  loftier  tone  into  the  political  opinion  of  one's  own 
circle  than  to  give  a  vote  in  a  general  election.  For  my 
part,  I  have  taken  some  interest  in  politics  for  fifty  years; 
but,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  I  have  very  rarely  given  a 
vote.  If  I  care  neither  to  enter  Parliament  nor  take  part  in 
government,  nor  even  to  vote  in  elections,  it  is  because  I 
hold  that  I  do  better  if  I  address  myself  to  the  duty  of  mould- 
ing opinion  whilst  I  keep  out  of  parliaments,  divisions,  and 
polling-booths.  I  ask  no  woman  to  forfeit  any  claim  to 
political  power  which  I  care  to  exercise  for  an  hour,  but  I 
would  that  every  woman  in  the  kingdom  cared  as  much  for 
politics  as  I  do  myself. 

But  it  is  not  in  the  intellectual,  political,  or  practical 
sphere  that  the  true  ambition  of  women  should  lie.  Their 
real  career  is  a  moral  one  to  ennoble  and  purify  the  entire 
life  of  mankind;  and  I  have  little  sympathy  with  the  ambi- 
tion which  looks  on  this  as  a  narrow  and  contemptible  office. 
Can  we  ever  have  too  much  sympathy,  generosity,  tenderness, 
and  purity?     Can  self-devotion,  long-suffering,  and  affection 


THE    WORK   OF    WOMEN  121 

ever  be  a  drug  in  the  market  ?  Can  our  homes  ever  be  too 
cheerful,  too  refined,  too  sweet  and  affectionate?  And  is  it 
degrading  the  sex  of  woman  to  dedicate  her  specially  to  this 
task  ?  If  it  be  true,  as  ten  thousand  poets  and  the  conscience 
of  mankind  have  taught  us,  that  these  sacred  qualities  of 
humanity  are  found  in  their  highest  perfection  in  woman, 
is  it  not  the  problem  of  civilisation  itself  so  to  nurture  our 
women  that  these  qualities  may  best  be  developed?  And 
can  Paradox  itself  assert  that  these  qualities  and  gifts  of 
heart  and  character  are  best  developed  by  effacing  the  attri- 
butes of  men  and  women,  by  plunging  women  as  a  sex  into 
that  hard  and  pitiless  struggle  for  wealth,  place,  or  fame, 
which  already  has  created  for  them  the  very  evils  of  which 
we  complain? 

If  hardness  be  the  curse  of  this  age,  are  we  to  cure  it  by 
making  women  as  hard  as  men  ?  If  the  race  after  wealth  and 
success  brutalises  men,  are  we  to  open  more  brutalising  careers 
to  women  ?  If  our  home  life  has  so  little  strength  to  correct 
the  evils  of  our  public  life,  are  we  to  cure  all  by  saying  that 
home  life  shall  not  be  reserved  even  for  one  sex  or  for  any 
age?  If  it  is  neither  in  intellectual  nor  in  practical  energy 
that  our  age  is  deficient,  but  in  unselfishness,  in  love,  in 
gentleness,  and  grace,  are  we  to  cure  the  accumulated  evils 
of  an  age  of  materialism  by  teaching  women  to  rely  on  them- 
selves, to  look  to  themselves,  and  to  work  for  themselves, 
by  telling  them  to  put  their  families  aside  and  turn  their 
thoughts  to  earnings  and  prizes,  to  strip  off  the  ancestral 
instincts  of  their  sex,  and  to  meet  man  shoulder  to  shoulder 
in  the  rough  and  tumble  of  competition. 

I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  the  Future  of  Humanity  is 
bound  up  in  this  problem  —  whether  women  are  to  grow 
more  truly  womanly  or  more  utterly  unwomanly.  If  the 
latter,  faith  in  Humanity  has  no  raison  d'etre,  no  meaning, 


122  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

no  future.  The  ideal  of  Humanity  is  the  development  of 
woman's  true  nature,  and  the  purification  of  man's  nature 
thereby.  The  assimilation  of  woman's  life  to  man's  cuts 
off  the  last  hope  of  establishing  the  Rule  of  Love  over  the 
Rule  of  Force,  of  ever  securing  for  Humanity  the  future 
to  which  we  look. 


V 


VOTES  FOR  WOMEN 

Great  as  is  the  revolution  in  the  Constitution  demanded 
to-day  by  some  Women,  it  is  but  an  incident  in  a  social 
problem  far  vaster  and  more  deep.  Those  who  advocate 
Votes  for  Women  are  wont  to  treat  it  as  a  simple  electoral 
reform,  such  as  were  the  Ballot  and  the  Lodger  franchise. 
It  is  a  very  different  thing.  It  cuts  down  to  the  roots  of  our 
family  life  —  our  social  life. 

It  is  ominous  to  note  the  levity  with  which  this  chaotic 
change  in  political  life  is  regarded,  and  the  meanness  with 
which  weak  public  men  yield  to  the  clamour  of  small  and 
noisy  minorities.  The  tremendous  experiment  of  entrust- 
ing political  power  to  another  sex  has  as  yet  been  tried 
(I  believe)  only  in  Scandinavia,  Australasia,  and  the  rude 
Far  West.  The  great  Republics  of  France  and  America 
decline  to  risk  their  peace  with  any  such  anomalous  fad^1"! 

Extension  of  the  franchise  of  any  kind  within  the  same 
sex  concerns  politics  only:  it  does  not  disintegrate  families; 
it  may  benefit  or  embarrass  the  State;  it  does  not  plant 
anarchy  in  the  Home.  No  thoughtful  man  or  woman  denies 
that  the  cry  of  "Votes  for  Women"  cannot  be  separated 
from  the  entire  consensus  of  the  domestic,  social,  and  spirit- 
ual existence  of  Woman  as  a  sex  distinct  from  Man.  Educa- 
tion, manners,  social  philosophy,  religion,  are  all  essentially 
involved  in  the  change.  It  is  no  mere  affair  of  Constitu- 
encies and  House  of  Commons.  It  affects  life  on  a  thousand 
sides. 

123 


124  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

It  is  not  easy  to  disengage  one's  mind  from  the  prejudice 
cast  on  the  cry  by  the  senseless  freaks  of  certain  female 
larrikins  of  late.  But  even  rowdyism  of  so  silly  and  suicidal 
a  kind  cannot  be  altogether',  neglected  in  a  survey  of  the 
situation,  and  that  for  at  least  two  reasons.  The  able  and 
distinguished  women  who  have  long  urged  this  claim  as  a 
right  have  not  succeeded  in  checking  these  follies,  even  if 
they  have  seriously  tried  to  check  them;  and  their  critics 
say  that  they  looked  on,  not  with  "sombre  acquiescence," 
as  a  famous  revolutionist  is  said  to  have  looked  on  at  massa- 
cres, but  with  rather  an  air  of  amused  encouragement.  In 
the  result,  the  cause  as  a  whole  suffered  from  outrages  which 
were  as  embarrassing  to  its  supporters  as  they  were  black- 
guardly in  form. 

A  second  point  —  and  one  of  much  more  importance  — 
is  this.  These  vicious  attacks  upon  friends,  the  indecency, 
the  brutalities,  the  tricks,  the  lying,  the  unmanly  and  un- 
womanly devices  of  these  displays,  testify  to  a  certain  inher- 
ent unfitness  of  women  to  exercise  political  power.  Nothing 
can  justify  girls  who  behave  in  public  places  like  the  street 
arabs  of  a  fighting  gang  in  the  East  End.  Nor  could  any 
political  object  excuse  women  who,  on  system,  resort  to 
personal  insolence,  mendacity,  and  physical  assaults  on 
doorkeepers  and  policemen.  This  is  no  casual  accident  of 
a  moment  of  irritation.  What  we  have  seen  has  gone  on 
for  years.  It  has  been  maintained  by  rich  and  strong  asso- 
ciations. It  has  been  organised  by  the  known  leaders  of 
"Women's  Rights."  And  under  it  we  have  seen  gangs  of 
hired  girls  behaving  in  public  places,  and  towards  the  agents 
of  public  order,  with  the  savagery  of  low  viragoes.  And 
many  of  the  Women  partisans  think  these  orgies  likely  to 
be  useful  to  the  Cause. 

What  such  extravagances  prove  is  this  —  that  under  strong 


VOTES    FOR    WOMEN  12  5 

political  inducements  women,  as  a  sex,  lose  their  heads, 
their  power  of  judgment,  and  their  self-control.  The 
immediate  aim  blinds  them  to  all  countervailing  reasons, 
to  all  fairness,  and  consideration  for  other  claims.  As  some 
criminals  are  said  to  "see  red,"  and  go  for  their  enemy, 
some  women,  when  stung  with  a  political  idea,  however  little 
urgent,  practical,  or  immediate  it  may  be,  "see  red,"  and 
go  blindly  for  that  one  aim  by  any  means  and  in  spite  of  any 
objection  offered  by  friend  or  foe.  They  fling  aside  mod- 
esty, the  habits  of  their  sex,  regard  for  justice,  and  common 
honesty.  As  to  truth,  honour,  decency,  men's  respect  for 
women  —  these  weigh  nothing  against  the  "Cry."  Now 
philosophy  and  experience  tell  us  that  Women,  as  a  sex, 
more  or  less  share  this  radical  infirmity  for  coolly  judging 
conflicting  interests  and  competing  claims. 

There  is  every  reason  to  fear  that  those  fits  of  blind  passion 
will  become  systematic.  If  these  viragoes  ever  did  worry 
men  into  yielding  the  suffrage,  they  would  only  be  heartened 
to  resort  to  the  same  tricks  to  win  admission  to  Parliament. 
This  won,  they  would  yell  and  ring  bells  till  men  yielded 
them  an  equal  number  of  seats  in  the  Cabinet.  As  every 
question  came  up  for  debate,  a  noisy  group  of  women  would 
rave  and  intrigue  to  get  their  favourite  Bill  taken  first,  or 
passed  at  any  cost.  It  is  the  incurable  incapacity  of  the 
average  female  mind  to  strike  a  fair  and  quiet  balance 
of  advantages  and  dangers,  of  which  the  recent  movement 
has  given  us  signal  examples.  Men  have  now  seen  women 
in  political  action.  And  they  will  not  trust  them.  The 
actual  constituencies  of  men  are  too  often  fickle,  excitable, 
and  unreasoning.  If  men  were  doubled  with  women,  con- 
stituencies would  seldom  be  anything  else  than  fickle,  excit- 
able, and  unreasoning. 

I  am  well  aware  that  in  urging  this,  and  in  using  plain 


126  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

language  to  express  the  disgust  that  sensible  men  and  women 
feel  for  female  rowdyism,  I  am  exposing  myself  to  the  ven- 
geance of  ill-conditioned  fanatics.  I  speak  plain  words,  be- 
cause I  see  with  shame  how  men  and  women  shrink  from 
uttering  what  they  feel  in  their  hearts.  It  is,  I  know,  part 
of  the  mean  game  in  favour,  to  try  what  can  be  done  by 
insolence,  mendacity,  and  petty  terrorism.  Nor  would  it 
surprise  me  if  some  of  the  hotter  spirits  proceeded  to  criminal 
outrages,  as  anarchist  women  have  done  in  Russia  and  Poland. 

I  am  also  well  aware  that  the  temper  of  misrepresentation 
will  seek  to  treat  my  criticism  of  rowdyism  as  insulting  to 
women  as  a  sex,  and  my  pointing  the  moral  of  this  rowdyism 
to  prove  a  general  weakness  in  women  for  political  discern- 
ment, as  if  it  were  a  depreciation  of  woman's  intellect  and 
character.  Nothing  could  be  more  untrue.  All  that  I  have 
said  in  preceding  Essays  of  the  fine  intelligence  and  high 
qualities  of  women  as  a  sex,  is  perfectly  consistent  with  my 
rooted  objection  to  giving  to  women  the  parliamentary  fran- 
chise. Nor  does  this  principle  tend  to  rule  women  out  of 
politics,  or  gainsay  the  truth,  that  women  have  a  great  and 
indispensable  part  to  play  in  political  life  —  the  supreme 
part,  in  fact,  and  a  part  which  women  alone  can  fill. 

There  is  neither  inconsistency  nor  paradox  in  this  view. 
It  turns  upon  the  fundamental  and  indelible  distinction 
between  Material  and  Moral  power  —  between  practical 
Control  and  spiritual  Influence  —  between  Force  and  Per- 
suasion. To  develop  this  innate  social  contrast,  this  ineradi- 
cable dualism  in  life,  is  a  prime  task  of  civilisation.  This  is 
not  a  mere  contrast  or  dualism  of  sex,  though  the  question 
of  sex  both  illustrates  it  and  shares  in  it.  It  marks  off  every 
kind  of  teaching,  persuading,  or  inspiring,  from  every  kind 
of  command,  judgment,  punishment,  or  combat.  All  who 
teach  or  preach,  who  do  the  thought  and  art  of  the  world 


VOTES    FOR   WOMEN  127 

pro  tanto  form  a  moral  power.  All  who  make  laws,  judge 
civil  and  criminal  causes,  who  govern  the  State,  form  and 
lead  armies  in  war,  exert  pro  tanto  a  material  power.  Women, 
as  a  sex,  are  pre-eminently  fit  to  exert  this  moral  power. 
Men  are  not  only  far  more  fit  to  exert  material  power  —  but 
for  a  very  large  part  of  it,  men  form  the  one  sex  which  is 
able  to  exert  it  efficiently  at  all. 

There  are  of  course  exceptions;  and  there  are  no  rigid 
divisions  either  as  to  sex,  or  office,  or  competence.  Some 
women  could  fight  in  war,  some  women  have  fought.  Ex- 
ceptional women  have  passed  their  lives  as  soldiers,  sailors, 
brickmakers,  and  jailers;  and  a  very  few  have  proved 
capable  rulers.  But  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  levy  armies 
of  women,  to  enrol  women  to  make  or  sail  ships,  to  dig, 
build  houses,  work  on  railways,  or  serve  in  the  police.  It  is, 
first  and  foremost,  because  women,  as  a  sex,  do  not  do 
and  cannot  do  these  things  —  i.e.  practically  the  whole  of 
the  material  work  of  the  world,  requiring  physical  force  and 
representing  physical  force  —  that  women,  as  a  sex,  have  no 
business  with  any  of  these  things  —  nor  with  the  political 
control  of  these  things  which  votes  imply.  x\nd  it  is  because 
men  —  and  men  only  —  can  do  these  things  and  represent 
this  material  force,  that  men,  and  men  only,  are  entitled  to 
the  political  control  which  in  the  last  resort  their  muscular 
force  has  to  make  good  and  defend. 

To  amalgamate  material  and  moral  power  in  the  same 
hand  inevitable  tends  to  both  tyranny  and  corruption.  It 
makes  the  ruler  oppressive  and  the  moralist  self-seeking. 
When  the  State  begins  to  enforce  its  opinions  it  ends  in 
persecution.  When  the  priest  is  the  master,  he  makes 
religion  odious.  The  mother  in  the  Home  uses  methods 
very  different  to  those  of  the  politician  in  the  Senate;  and 
she  exerts  a  purer  and  a  nobler  power.     Moralists,  however 


128  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

wise  and  however  stimulating,  are  often  unwilling  or  un- 
able to  measure  countervailing  interests  and  claims.  And 
preachers,  whatever  their  eloquence  and  their  religious  zeal, 
are  not  always  to  be  followed  in  things  of  the  world.  Their 
counsels  are  always  to  be  heard  and  respected,  and  indeed 
marked,  learned,  and  inwardly  digested  —  but  they  too 
often  neglect  the  practical  difficulties  which  make  their 
counsels  impracticable  at  the  time. 

It  is  neither  to  deny  nor  to  disparage  the  part  in  political 
life  to  be  played  by  women,  if  we  would  liken  their  political 
action  to  that  exerted  throughout  history  by  so  many  illus- 
trious teachers,  moralists,  and  priests.  Socrates,  St.  Paul, 
St.  Francis,  and  Milton,  would  never  have  left  the  world 
types  of  noble  morality  if  they  had  been  empowered  by  law 
to  compel  their  respective  generations  to  follow  their  codes 
of  life.  Let  the  story  of  Plato's  Utopia,  and  the  rules  of 
Dominic  and  Calvin  be  a  warning.  The  less  the  spiritual 
forces  are  mixed  up  in  government  the  more  spiritual  re- 
mains the  influence  and  the  more  free  from  tyranny  is  the 
government.  It  is  not  to  degrade  women's  part  if  we  ask 
them  to  hold  fast  to  that  influence  which  they  have  and  can 
use  —  the  spiritual  and  moral  authority  —  and  not  to  diminish 
and  debase  it  by  grasping  at  the  inferior  part  —  that  material 
force  which  they  cannot  use  without  soiling  their  own. 

I  am  not  for  imposing  on  women  any  disability  which  I 
am  not  willing  personally  to  accept.  The  worst  of  all  des- 
potisms it  has  been  said  is  a  " pedantocracy"  —  the  rule  of 
philosophers  or  moralists.  Those  who  devote  their  whole 
attention  to  the  theory  of  politics  and  the  ethics  of  society, 
inevitably  make  unsatisfactory  statesmen.  Burke,  Condor- 
cet,  Mill,  and  Herbert  Spencer  were  never  born  for  poli- 
tics, and  all  of  them  made  amazing  practical  blunders. 
Compromise  is  the  essence  of  politics,  and  the  statesman  has 


VOTES   FOR   WOMEN  1 29 

daily  to  consider  which  of  many  bad,  and  some  very  danger- 
ous courses,  is  the  least  bad  and  the  least  injurious.  It  is 
often  not  even  the  second-best  course  which  is  the  least 
impracticable.  All  courses  are  often  full  of  danger,  and 
some  of  them  quite  shameful  or  immoral.  But  the  duty  of 
the  moralist  is  to  avoid  compromise  with  anything  evil,  as 
the  duty  of  the  theorist  is  to  enforce  principles  in  season 
and  out  of  season. 

As  for  myself,  in  common  with  all  those  who  charge  them- 
selves with  political  principle  and  the  ethics  of  the  State,  I 
have  through  life  reserved  myself  to  seeking  to  influence 
opinion,  whilst  keeping  clear  of  political  life.  Except  that 
I  once  allowed  my  name  to  be  used  to  assert  a  principle  in  a 
famous  contest,  I  have  systematically  refused  to  be  nomi- 
nated for  Parliament.  Though  I  have  been  on  the  Register 
of  several  constituencies,  both  urban  and  rural,  I  have  hardly 
ever  voted  in  a  parliamentary  contest  in  fifty  years.  I  have 
never  troubled  myself  to  ask  if  my  name  were,  or  were  not, 
on  this  or  that  Register.  I  have  taken  the  keenest  interest 
in  all  the  political  contests  of  the  last  fifty  years.  And  I 
have  made  every  effort  to  influence  opinion.  But  I  always 
held  that  to  be  a  candidate,  or  even  on  a  candidate's  com- 
mittee, would  rather  lessen  than  increase  any  influence  I 
might  have  in  moulding  opinion. 

It  is  a  fixed  psychologic  law  that  the  earnestness  of  moral 
and  spiritual  emotion  —  which  is  the  strength  and  beauty 
of  the  higher  natures  —  too  often  shuts  off  from  the  ken  of 
those  most  deeply  moved  the  nice  adjustment  of  balance 
in  competing  good  and  evil,  usefulness  and  risk.  St.  Ber- 
nard, St.  Francis,  Fenelon,  Wesley,  the  Slavery  and  the 
Drink  Abolitionists,  had  noble  messages  to  deliver,  but  they 
would  prove  most  oppressive  legislators  and  judges.  Their 
very  merit  lay  in  their  bold  defiance  of  obstacles,  their  in- 


130  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

difference  to  all  countervailing  risks,  their  disdain  of  com- 
promise. But  compromise  is  the  daily  and  hourly  necessity 
of  practical  affairs.  And  those  who  disdain  compromise  are 
ever  on  the  verge  of  oppression  and  disaster,  and  too  often 
face  both  together  with  a  light  heart.  We  are  bound  to  hear 
and  weigh  all  that  such  men  can  urge.  But  it  is  for  men 
of  a  very  different  stamp  —  often  it  may  be  men  of  a  stamp 
more  common  and  less  fine  —  to  decide  the  issue  and  abide 
the  result. 

Now  women  in  the  average,  as  a  sex,  share  this  nature. 
They  form  opinions  more  quickly,  less  patiently,  less  coolly 
than  do  men.  Emotion,  prejudice,  sentiment,  play  a  larger 
part  in  their  decisions  than  in  those  of  men.  They  are  less 
in  the  habit  of  facing  practical  risks  and  dilemmas.  They 
will  not  take  pains  to  walk  all  round  embarrassing  crises 
before  they  decide;  nor  do  they  habitually  weigh  all  sides 
of  a  question  with  a  fair  impartial  temper.  It  would  be 
laughable  to  tell  us  that  men  and  women  are  equally  fitted 
by  nature  to  form  a  balanced  judgment  of  this  kind.  Com- 
mon sense  records  the  contrary  as  a  fact.  But  all  political 
questions  and  all  parliamentary  elections  really  turn,  or 
ought  to  turn,  on  nicely  balanced  judgments  of  this  sort. 

But  there  is  a  further  reason  for  doubting  the  impartial 
judgment  of  women  as  a  sex  in  the  ineradicable  tendency 
of  the  female  mind  to  be  swayed  by  the  personal  equation. 
When  it  is  a  question  of  deciding  between  candidates,  when 
the  personal  character  of  a  party  leader,  statesman,  or  orator 
is  in  issue,  women  are  more  open  to  improvise  favourable  or 
adverse  opinions  than  are  men.  It  is  well  that  the  personal 
bias  should  have  due  consideration,  but  it  is  a  perpetual 
temptation  to  prejudice  and  injustice.  Men  never  trust  a 
woman  to  be  judge  in  an  intricate  case  of  crime  or  an  obscure 
conflict  of  civil  rights.     "Hard  cases  make  bad  law":  — 


VOTES   FOR   WOMEN  131 

and  female  judges  would  bring  justice  to  shame.  Who 
would  trust  a  woman  to  pass  sentence  on  batches  of  prisoners 
at  ordinary  assizes?  The  kind  of  crime  charged,  the  age, 
sex,  character  of  every  plaintiff  or  defendant,  prosecutor  or 
prisoner,  would  disturb  the  mind  of  a  woman,  however 
learned  in  the  law  and  familiar  with  crime.  Sentences  too 
harsh,  or  too  light;  judgments  that  might  be  good  in  ethics, 
but  very  bad  in  law  —  would  be  the  result.  Who  would 
care  to  see  a  woman  President  of  the  Divorce  Court  ?  Who 
would  trust  a  jury  of  women  to  try  prisoners  at  the  Central 
Criminal  Court?  For  my  own  part,  I  would  as  soon  see  a 
woman  hangman,  or  a  female  warder  administering  a  flog- 
ging to  a  prisoner. 

This  is  no  disparaging  of  Women.  It  is  said  in  their 
honour  and  to  their  praise.  If  the  hoydens  who  shout  for 
Bung  and  ring  bells  are  ready  to  laugh  and  jeer  at  such 
homely  truths,  women  of  sense  and  good  feeling  know  that 
there  are  public  duties  for  which  their  very  virtues  and  re- 
finements disqualify  them.  They  will  amply  bear  me  out 
in  maintaining  that  women  in  the  average  decide  mixed 
questions  of  right  and  wrong,  safety  and  danger,  profit  or 
loss,  rather  under  the  impulse  of  feeling  than  after  a  dis- 
passionate balance  of  alternatives.  Now  the  governing  of 
states,  problems  of  taxation,  alliances,  armaments  of  war, 
demand  the  utmost  use  of  a  dispassionate  balance  of  alter- 
natives. It  is  little  enough  of  this  that  the  voters  of  to-day 
possess.  Average  women  can  hardly  be  said  to  exercise  it 
at  all. 

It  is  not  to  discredit  women  if  we  urge  that,  if  women 
ever  obtained  a  controlling  voice  over  Parliament,  the  coun- 
try would  be  constantly  committed  to  those  causes  which 
from  time  to  time  appeal  to  the  imagination  and  the  feel- 
ings, without  due  regard  to  all  the  cost,  difficulties,  and  risks 


132  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

they  might  involve.  Every  "atrocity"  indignation  move- 
ment would  be  suddenly  swollen  into  an  international  crisis. 
Alliances  would  be  made  on  premature  or  impulsive  grounds. 
National  obligations  would  be  piled  up  under  some  outburst 
of  pity.  Movements,  leaders,  and  parties  would  be  sup- 
ported or  opposed  on  inadequate  knowledge  of  facts,  on 
trivial  personal  grounds,  or  in  spite  of  obvious  risks.  The 
state  budget  would  be  concocted  for  reasons  of  sentiment. 
International  alliances  and  menaces  would  be  the  "happy 
thoughts"  of  some  moment  of  great  excitement.  And,  with- 
out intending  it  or  providing  against  it,  the  nation  would  be 
plunged  into  war.  Thereupon  the  burden  of  new  taxation 
would  fall  mainly  on  our  sex ;  the  tangle  of  diplomacy  would 
be  wholly  our  task;  and  at  sea  and  land  the  battles  would 
be  fought  out  only  by  men. 

I  do  not  assert  that  all  this  is  either  probable  or  possible. 
It  is  an  assumption  based  on  the  idea  of  women  having 
obtained  a  controlling  voice  in  Parliament.  That,  of  course, 
in  spite  of  their  being  a  majority  of  adults,  they  never  could 
have.  Physical  force  would  come  into  play  long  before 
such  a  point  was  reached.  But  I  do  assert  that  the  admis- 
sion of  women  to  the  parliamentary  franchise  on  equal 
terms  with  men  would  have  a  tendency  to  bring  the  nation 
towards  such  a  state  of  things  —  intensifying  all  the  evils 
of  our  present  democracy,  and  destroying  all  the  present 
value  of  the  moral  influence  of  women  in  things  political. 

We  are  told  —  and  it  is  most  true  —  that  national  ex- 
penditure waits  on  national  policy.  It  is  even  more  true 
and  more  important,  that  peace  and  war  depend  on  national 
policy.  And  national  policy  is  a  highly  intricate  and  subtle 
compound  of  advantages  and  risks;  ideals  to  be  aimed  at 
and  difficulties  to  be  overcome;  compromises  to  the  making 
of  which  problems  moral,  material,  physical,  sentimental, 


VOTES   FOR  WOMEN  133 

diplomatic,  and  strategic  enter,  cross  and  re-cross.  They 
appeal  alternately  to  passion,  patriotism,  caution,  and  fore- 
thought. They  may  redound  to  the  honour  of  a  nation,  or 
they  may  ruin  a  nation.  They  are  never  simple  matters, 
though  they  often  look  simple.  And  the  consequences  of  a 
false  step  are  terrible  to  contemplate. 

Now  I  say  frankly  that  I  do  not  trust  the  average  woman 
to  decide  these  complex  issues.  I  know  many  able  women 
whose  opinion  on  great  political  questions  I  value  highly, 
whose  motives  and  enthusiasm  I  profoundly  respect.  But 
in  an  experience  now  of  fifty  years  I  cannot  trust  the  judg- 
ment of  even  the  most  thoughtful  women  in  all  the  matters 
of  finance,  armaments,  alliances,  and  legislation  which  make 
up  national  policy.  To  speak  the  truth,  I  only  know  one 
woman  whom  I  would  always  trust  to  come  to  a  right  deci- 
sion ;  and  she  happens  to  be  a  resolute  opponent  of  Votes  for 
Women. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  it  is  by  possessing  higher 
qualities  —  not  for  any  inferiority  of  intelligence  which 
makes  the  political  judgment  of  the  average  woman  un- 
trustworthy and  unstable.  The  real  objection  to  "Votes  for 
Women,"  over  and  above  that  it  risks  imposing  on  men 
sacrifices  of  labour  and  life  which  women  do  not  share,  is 
this  ^that  jtMJegrades  and  weakens  the  moral  and  emotional 
influence  which  women  indirectly  give  to  men  and  have  never 
failed  to  give.  The  power  of  women  to  moralise  life  and  to 
modify  action  is  not  lost  because  it  is  exerted  in  society, 
in  the  home,  in  literature,  in  education.  To  sink  this  high 
and  ennobling  influence  in  the  rough-and-tumble  of  elections 
would  be  to  destroy  it  and  debase  it. 

Quite  apart  from  the  vulgar  insolence  of  the  disorderly 
girls,  we  have  seen  how  of  late  years  the  demand  for  Votes 
has  been  worked  by  the  mass  of  its  advocates  with  a  passion, 


134  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

an  unreasoning  spirit  of  mischief,  a  one-eyed  defiance  of  all 
the  public  interests  of  the  nation,  and,  alas !  with  that  spite 
and  untruthfulness  which  is  too  often  the  failing  of  some 
good  women  even  in  a  good  cause.  The  agitation  about 
Temperance,  Contagious  Diseases,  Punishment  for  Crime, 
Marriage  Laws,  and  the  like,  too  often  show  how  women, 
in  pursuit  of  a  movement  they  desire,  develop  a  rancour, 
an  injustice  towards  persons,  a  bitterness  of  temper,  which 
cause  them  to  fling  away  common  sense,  fairness,  truth,  and 
even  decency.  The  old  saw,  however  unjust  in  ordinary 
life,  is  too  often  true  in  politics :  —  aut  amat,  aut  odit  mulier, 
nihil  est  tertium. 

We  have  seen  of  late  —  we  are  destined  often  to  see  — 
furens  quid  femina  possit.  And  this  unfortunate  tendency 
in  the  feminine  organism  —  a  tendency  which  is  often  shared 
by  some  noble-hearted  men  —  will  be  immensely  stimulated 
if  women  systematically  engage  in  contested  elections.  Can 
the  moral  influence  of  women  in  public  life  be  improved 
when  husband  and  wife  serve  on  opposed  committees,  per- 
haps ridicule  and  denounce  rival  candidates  on  their  party 
platforms;  when  mother  and  daughter,  sister  and  brother, 
vote  against  each  other,  and  fight  out  at  home  the  jeers,  the 
falsehoods,  and  the  taunts  they  have  heard  in  the  party 
meetings?  Every  home  will  be  a  small  committee-room. 
And  the  father,  who  in  old  times  was  called  the  "Master  of 
the  House,"  will  be  heckled  over  dinner  by  his  adult  daugh- 
ters, and  badgered  to  vote  for  some  female  fad  of  the  hour. 

This  is  no  fancy  picture.  We  have  seen  how  easily  in 
the  more  excitable  natures  the  agitation  for  female  suffrage 
stiffens  into  a  kind  of  sex-war.  This  sex-war  calls  out  all 
the  latent  discontent  which  too  many  women  unconsciously 
nurse,  and  is  often  a  mere  mask  to  the  wish  for  separation  in 
families  on  more  or  less  equivocal  grounds.     Equal  electoral 


VOTES    FOR   WOMEN  135 

rights  could  not  fail  to  inflame  a  standing  war  between  the 
sexes,  by  giving  equal  power  to  man  and  woman  where  the 
practical  responsibilities  and  capacities  are  not  equal.  Every 
man  who  has  ever  had  to  back  a  very  unpopular  cause, 
whether  religious,  social,  or  political,  has  often  had  to  face 
the  rancour,  insults,  and  injustice,  with  which  he  has  been 
treated  by  women  who  passionately  espouse  the  opposite 
side.  We  have  seen  women  of  high  character  and  attain- 
ments deformed  under  ardent  zeal  for  a  Cause  into  impla- 
cable and  unfeeling  enemies  of  men,  whose  only  crime  was 
that  they  obeyed  a  sense  of  public  duty.  This  sinister  tem- 
per must  be  greatly  stimulated  by  introducing  woman  in  the 
mass  to  the  ordinary  turmoil  of  elections. 

This  is  but  an  incident  of  the  change,  and,  we  may  trust, 
one  far  from  general.  The  universal  and  inevitable  result 
of  female  franchise  would  be  a  subtle  weakening  of  men's 
respect  for  women's  opinion  —  and  indeed  soon  a  weaken- 
ing of  men's  respect  for  women.  The  woman's  vote  would 
always  be  actually  or  possibly  on  "the  wrong  side."  Is  the 
husband  to  "canvass"  the  wife,  or  the  wife  the  husband? 
Is  the  daughter  to  "canvass"  her  mother,  the  brother,  or 
the  neighbour,  till  they  promise  "to  vote  straight"?  Are 
wives,  mothers,  daughters,  to  attend  the  party  meetings,  to 
read  the  party  journals,  and  search  the  electoral  register? 
Unless  they  do,  men  will  think  their  vote  unmeaning  —  the 
result  of  prejudice  or  chance.  How  are  women  to  be  made 
fit  to  exercise  the  parliamentary  franchise,  unless  they  do 
all  that  men  do  in  hot  electioneering  times?  And  will 
homes  be  more  happy  and  more  pleasant  when  they  do 
these  things? 

Till  lately  we  have  all  felt  easy  that,  in  the  hottest  fight 
at  elections,  we  could  find  peace  at  home,  and  need  not 
carry  on  the  wrangle  of  the  street  corner  over  a  quiet  supper. 


136  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

And  the  poor  man  felt  safe  that  his  neighbours  had  no 
means  of  getting  behind  the  ballot,  if  he  chose  to  hold  his 
tongue.  But  if  his  wife  or  his  daughter  are  keen  for  the 
"red"  ticket,  will  they  not  worm  it  out  of  him  that  he  voted 
"blue"?  And  will  his  supper  be  as  good  and  as  punctual 
when  his  wife  is  away  listening  to  her  favourite  speaker,  or 
is  abusing  the  candidate  "her  old  man"  has  promised  to 
support?  And  will  his  daughter  be  all  to  him  she  used  to 
be  as  he  returned  from  work,  when  she  is  deep  in  the  comic 
posters,  fly-sheets,  and  ribald  ballads  of  the  day,  or  has 
come  home  hot  from  heckling  a  weak  candidate  about  Sun- 
day shopping,  local  option,  and  vaccination? 

Jesting  apart  —  and  really  these  things  are  not  mere 
jests  —  the  serious  prospect  is  that  the  change  will  be  from 
the  state  of  mind  when  men  listen  to  women's  opinion, 
value  it,  and  give  it  weight,  to  the  state  of  things  when  men 
will  dispute  with  women  about  matters  to  which  life  tells 
them  daily  they  are  closer,  and  which  they  know  better  in 
practice.  Of  old,  no  opinion  was  more  stimulating  and 
more  clarifying  than  the  well-thought  view  of  an  able  and 
high-minded  woman  on  a  great  political  crisis.  It  might 
not  always  be  practicable,  or  complete  in  knowledge,  or  free 
from  risk.  But  it  was  a  thing  to  know  and  to  weigh  with 
care.  Alas !  we  know  how  in  electoral  contests,  the  great 
issues  of  right  and  wrong,  wise  policy  or  rash  adventure,  are 
obscured  by  petty  details  of  administration,  personal  triviali- 
ties, and  specious  promises.  It  is  to  side-issues  of  this  kind 
that  the  feminine  instinct  naturally  turns.  And  to  extend 
the  parliamentary  franchise  to  women  will  greatly  increase 
the  share  of  trivialities  and  personalities  in  deciding  electoral 
contests. 

The  parliamentary  franchise  can  only  be  given  to  all 
adult  women  without  exception.     A  limited  extension  of  the 


VOTES   FOR   WOMEN  I37 

franchise  would  be  fiercely  resisted  by  Labour,  and  in  fact 
would  only  result  in  renewed  struggles.  But  adult  female 
suffrage  would  affect  not  only  Parliament  and  elections,  but 
every  home  and  every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  its  ulterior 
results.  Its  main  support  is  the  dogma  of  Democracy  that 
every  sane  and  adult  man  and  woman  are  equal.  All  that 
I  have  argued  as  to  the  sexes  turns  upon  the  true  doctrine, 
that  men  and  women  _are  ngver~  equal  but  different  and 
mutually  coincident.  But  if  in  many  things  women  are  far 
more  fit  to  lead  than  are  men,  nothing  has  occurred  to  shake 
the  ancient  and  eternal  truth  that  men  are  far  more  fit  than 
women  to  rule  the  State  which,  materially  speaking,  is  mainly 
the  work  of  men's  toil,  and  which  in  the  way  of  physical 
defence  is  solely  the  task  of  men's  bodies  and  lives. 


VI 


CIVIL  MARRIAGE 

The  question  of  Lay  versus  Ecclesiastical  Marriage  has 
become  a  burning  problem  in  some  European  countries,  and 
gives  rise  in  our  own  country  to  several  irritating  anomalies. 
It  is  ever  at  hand  to  bring  about  a  conflict  between  the  Law 
of  the  State  and  the  most  cherished  institutions  of  Religion. 
We  need  say  nothing  now  about  the  scandalous  anomalies 
in  the  conflicting  law  of  the  three  Kingdoms  as  to  the  Mar- 
riage rite.  A  much  deeper  question  is  at  issue  —  one  which 
has  threatened  a  constitutional  dead-lock  in  Hungary,  and 
one  which  may  easily  lead  to  a  bitter  struggle  in  our  own  or 
any  other  country. 

The  outrageous  pretensions  of  certain  Churches  to  ignore 
and  eliminate  the  State  from  the  Marriage  Ceremony,  the 
revolting  indecorum  of  a  civil  marriage  as  practised  in  Eng- 
land, the  natural  abhorrence  of  most  men  and  of  nearly  all 
women  to  accept  the  Registrar's  off-hand  blessing  as  an 
adequate  Marriage  rite,  the  indecency  of  sending  for  the 
legal  representative  of  the  State  to  attend  the  Church  cere- 
mony, at  which  he  is  treated  as  a  sort  of  unrecognised  official 
witness  to  be  kept  out  of  sight,  like  the  confectioner  who 
makes  the  wedding-cake  —  these  things  may  at  any  hour 
land  us  in  a  very  difficult  dilemma. 

It  is  certain  that  a  considerable  number  of  English  men 
and  the  immense  majority  of  English  women  still  look  on 
the  Marriage  rite  as  having  a  sacramental  or  at  least  a  reli- 
gious meaning.     It  is  certain  that  a  large  and  growing  num- 

138 


CIVIL    MARRIAGE  139 

ber  of  Englishmen  look  on  it  as  a  purely  legal  solemnity,  and 
they  endure  the  ecclesiastical  rite  as  a  mere  accident  like 
orange-blossom  or  the  sugared  cake.  A  very  resolute  minor- 
ity refuse  to  accept  even  this,  and  object  to  any  ceremonial 
outside  the  Registrar's  office.  The  various  religious  com- 
munions, each  insisting  on  their  own  form  of  Marriage,  are 
almost  infinite.  Many  of  these  communions  are  too  obscure, 
too  much  scattered,  and  not  sufficiently  settled,  to  make  it 
possible  for  the  State  to  accept  their  private,  local,  Registers 
as  conclusive,  or  to  confer  on  any  spontaneous  Little  Bethe1 
that  may  choose  to  call  itself  a  communion,  the  legal  authority 
to  constitute  a  binding  marriage  —  such  as  the  Church  in 
England  has  enjoyed  for  a  thousand  years.  In  the  mean- 
time the  diversity  of  sects  and  the  conflict  of  opinions  in- 
crease every  day.  Wedlock  never  will  be,  never  can  be  con- 
fined within  the  limits  of  any  Church  sect,  or  opinion.  Men 
and  women,  at  any  rate  in  the  eye  of  the  State,  ought  to  be 
free  to  marry  into  or  out  of  any  church,  any  communion,  any 
school  of  thought.  Here  is  a  dilemma  fertile  of  strife,  in 
which  the  partisans,  first  of  Civil,  then  of  Religious,  Liberty, 
are  equally  hot,  equally  wrong,  and  equally  right. 

As  in  so  many  other  cases,  Positivism  offers  a  fair  solution 
of  the  problem  alike  agreeable  to  Law  and  to  Religion,  to 
Church  and  to  State,  to  the  Secularist  and  to  the  Spiritualist. 
And  it  does  this  by  holding  fast  to  its  cardinal  doctrine  — 
the  docrtine  which  solves  so  many  a  political  and  religious 
controversy  —  to  keep  distinct  but  co-ordinate  the  physical 
coercion  of  Government  and  the  moral  and  spiritual  force  of 
Belief,  Devotion,  or  Opinion.  Marriage  must  be  treated  as 
having  a  double  character  —  legal  and  religious  :  legal  for  all, 
absolutely  in  the  same  way ;  religious  for  those  who  choose, 
in  any  way  they  desire  and  approve  at  their  sole  discretion. 
The  State  must  have  its  own  ceremony,  the  same  for  all, 


I40  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

indispensable  for  all,  without  which  there  can  be  no  marriage 
in  law.  After  this,  with  this,  before  this  (if  they  so  please) 
any  person  or  community  must  be  free  to  hold  its  own  reli- 
gious ceremonial  — -  sacramental  or  secular,  ethical  or 
mystical. 

There  are  two  entirely  distinct  sides  to  Marriage  as  a 
rite  —  one  the  lawful  union  for  the  purposes  of  law  and  the 
State ;  one  the  spiritual  consecration  (for  all  who  desire  any  at* 
all)  in  such  forms  and  by  such  functionaries  as  parties  to 
the  union  hold  binding  on  their  conscience,  and  congenial  to 
their  religious  feelings.  The  strife  has  arisen  from  the  effort 
to  coerce  these  two  sides  into  some  common  rite,  from  the 
intolerant  desire  of  statesmen  to  force  religionists  to  accept 
their  rite,  and  the  equally  intolerant  desire  of  Churchmen  to 
force  the  State  to  substitute  the  theological  for  the  political 
sanction.  To  Positivists,  Marriage  is  at  the  same  time  an 
act  in  law  —  a  political  function  —  and  also  a  sacrament  or 
religious  consecration.  Both  are  indispensable  —  perfectly 
distinct  —  alike  honourable ;  and  both  should  be  conducted 
with  equal  dignity  and  publicity. 

It  needs  no  argument  to  show  —  what  lies  at  the  very  root 
of  law  and  indeed  of  civil  Society  —  that  the  State  has  the 
highest  interest  in  determining  the  conditions  and  forms  of 
lawful  marriage.  The  devolution  of  property,  the  rights  of 
kinship  and  family,  the  whole  field  of  personal  law  depend 
on  certain  solemn  acts  in  the  law  deliberately  concluded  with 
the  formalities  recognised  by  law.  This  is  perfectly  indepen- 
dent of  Church,  nationality,  religion,  or  opinion  in  any  sort. 
In  England,  to  be  precise,  a  man  and  woman  are  lawful 
husband  and  wife  when  —  and  only  when  —  they  have  con- 
sented to  fulfil  the  conditions  and  to  observe  the  formalities 
recognised  in  English  courts  of  justice  as  constituting  marriage. 
And  this  is  the  case  whether  both  or  either  be  Christian,  Jew, 


CIVIL    MARRIAGE  141 

Shaker,  or  Secularist.     The  law  accepts  in  England  specified 
forms  only,  and  has  strictly  limited  these  forms. 

If  every  sect  or  communion  could  devise  its  own  forms, 
appeal  to  its  own  register,  and  compel  the  judges  of  the  land 
to  recognise  these,  confusion  and  uncertainty  would  result 
from  the  infinite  variety  of  religious  congregations  and  the 
more  or  less  casual  character  of  each  local  register.  Courts 
of  justice  would  be  involved  in  endless  inquiries  as  to  whether 
any  legal  marriage  had  been  performed  at  all,  what  persons 
were  legitimate,  married,  or  single;  and  what  was  a  com- 
petent record  of  any  given  wedlock.  The  State  has  the  highest 
possible  interest  in  securing  public  formalities,  simple  and 
notorious  acts  in  law,  and  an  unimpeachable  record  of  the 
law,  such  as  could  not  be  mislaid  or  tampered  with.  What- 
ever else  is  done,  the  State  is  bound  to  insist  on  some  definite, 
public,  uniform  rite  or  set  of  rites. 

In  the  heyday  of  Churches  the  matter  was  very  simple. 
The  whole  nation,  or  an  immense  majority  of  it,  accepted  "^ 
the  Church  rite,  and  the  State  adopted  that  act  as  its  own. 
It  constituted  the  priest  its  own  Registrar,  and  gave  legal 
effect  to  the  parish  book.  The  civil  law  of  the  State  practically 
accepted  the  ecclesiastical  law  of  the  Church,  and  the  partner- 
ship worked,  on  the  whole,  sufficiently  well.  Scandals,  con- 
fusion, and  anomalies  arose;  and  these  were  from  time  to 
time  dealt  with  by  legal  decision,  or  by  legislation.  The 
State  treated  the  parson  as  its  own  official,  put  him  under  very 
severe  penalties  in  case  of  any  irregularity,  prescribed  hours, 
licences,  constituted  lay  courts  for  marriage  law,  and  in 
effect  amalgamated  the  State  formality  and  Church  cere- 
monial. 

This  worked  fairly  well  so  long  as  the  whole  nation  practi- 
cally adhered  to  one  Church,  or  accepted  the  State  Church  as 
its  own.     The  reformed  Church  of  England  seized  on  the 


142  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

privileges  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  at  once  found  the 
marriage  law  a  potent  engine  of  spiritual  ascendancy.  But 
the  whole  case  was  altered  when  dissenting  sects  began  to 
multiply;  and  still  more  when  a  resolute  minority  revolted 
from  any  theological  communion.  The  cry  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty  was  raised  in  all  quarters  in  such  menacing 
tones  that  legislation  had  to  interfere.  And  legislation  has 
at  present  stopped  at  the  weak  and  indecorous  compromise 
that  we  now  see.  The  Catholic  Church,  with  its  growing 
strength  and  pretensions,  is  very  naturally  indignant  that  the 
Established  priests  should  monopolise  their  ancient  privilege 
of  performing  legal  marriage  without  the  intervention  of 
a  State  official,  and  it  indemnifies  itself  by  treating  the  State 
official  with  studied  contempt,  which  it  must  be  said  that  a 
common  clerk,  busy  only  about  his  fees,  cheerfully  accepts. 

Every  concession  made  to  this  or  that  powerful  com- 
munity, stimulates  the  rival  sects  to  ask  for  the  same.  Public 
opinion  is  not  yet  prepared  to  put  Catholic  priests  and  Shaker 
expounders  on  the  same  legal  footing  as  the  Rector  of  the 
Parish.  Nor  could  the  law  courts  accept  any  bit  of  paper 
which  professed  to  record  a  marriage  as  performed  by  the 
local  shoemaker  in  what  Churchmen  so  insolently  called  "  a 
hedge-side  tin  tabernacle,"  or,  indeed,  for  that  matter,  in  a 
common  public-house  by  the  publican  himself.  There  are 
a  thousand  communions  which  profess  to  have  their  own 
religious  ideas.  They  all  object  to  special  privileges  being 
conferred  on  any  of  their  rivals.  To  give  them  all  equal 
rights  of  celebrating  legal  marriage  would  turn  law  into  a 
quagmire  and  law  courts  into  a  bear  garden.  There  can  be 
no  peace  whilst  this  growing  and  burning  problem  is  left  open. 
It  goes  down  to  the  root  question  of  an  Established  Church, 
and  forms  one  of  its  hopeless  dilemmas. 

To  one  plain  and  simple  solution  we  must  come.     What- 


CIVIL   MARRIAGE  1 43 

ever  else  is  done,  the  State  must  insist  on  its  own  independent, 
uniform,  lay  act  in  the  law :  distinct  from  any  religious  rite, 
and  not  affected  by  any  religious  rite,  antecedent  subsequent, 
or  simultaneous.  The  State  must  have  its  own  official,  its 
own  distinct  ceremony,  its  own  national  register,  and  its  own 
absolute  record  in  its  own  keeping.  With  all  this  duly  done 
and  witnessed  —  valid,  unimpeachable  marriage  is  con- 
cluded in  the  eye  of  the  State  and  in  judgment  of  law.  With- 
out this  —  no  marriage,  no  legitimacy,  no  legal  consequences 
from  any  pretended  ceremony  of  marriage.  No  citizen 
need  in  the  eye  of  the  law  do  more :  but  no  citizen  can  be 
married  with  less.  With  this,  before  this,  after  this,  any 
citizen  can  perform  any  ceremony,  take  any  sacrament,  or 
conform  to  any  ritual  that  suits  his  conscience,  and  that  his 
own  religious  communion  pleases  to  offer  him.  He  may  take 
a  dozen  sacraments  and  go  through  a  series  of  different  cere- 
monies (as  a  noble  pair  is  said  to  have  done,  alas !  unsuc- 
cessfully !).  But  of  that  the  law  will  know  nothing.  That 
is  between  himself  and  his  spiritual  advisers. 

It  is  ridiculous  to  pretend  that  this  legal  ceremony  can  be 
a  hardship  on  Churchmen,  or  that  it  is  putting  pressure  on 
their  conscience  to  compel  them  to  appear  before  a  lay  rep- 
resentative of  the  State.  They  can  hardly  deny  that  marriage 
has  in  the  eye  of  the  law  and  for  purposes  of  civil  society 
a  lay  aspect,  civil  effects,  and  purely  legal  incidents.  If  they 
desire  courts  of  justice  to  give  effect  to  the  rights  and  obliga- 
tions of  husband  and  wife,  parent  and  child,  to  regulate  rights 
of  inheritance,  and  to  define  legitimacy  and  bastardy,  they 
cannot  complain  if  the  State  requires  these  lay  and  legal 
results  of  the  status  produced  by  marriage  to  be  officially 
confirmed,  witnessed,  and  recorded. 

It  is  as  silly  to  complain  of  compulsory  civil  marriage  as  it 
would  be  to  complain  of  compulsory  execution  by  deed  of  a 


144  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

binding  marriage  settlement.  It  would  be  idle  to  ask  a  court 
of  justice  to  accept  the  oral  evidence  of  a  priest  as  to  a  verbal 
settlement  of  an  estate  at  the  altar.  And  it  would  be  idle  to 
maintain  that  the  conscience  of  bride  and  bridegroom  was 
wounded  because  a  solicitor  insisted  on  their  executing  a  deed 
on  parchment.  Civil  effects  in  law  ought  to  follow  from  lay 
acts  in  the  law.  And  it  is  as  childish  to  talk  about  conscience* 
when  for  purely  civil  purposes  bride  and  bridegroom  are  called 
to  appear  before  an  officer  of  the  State,  as  it  would  be  to 
talk  about  conscience  when  he  or  she  are  required  to  give 
evidence  before  a  magistrate.  We  shall  be  told  next  that  these 
tender  consciences  forbid  them  to  make  a  legal  will,  and  that 
judges  must  take  in  lieu  of  a  last  testament  the  recollections 
of  the  clergyman  who  attended  at  the  bedside.  Perhaps  it 
is  an  unholy  act  to  register  the  birth  of  a  child  before  a  lay 
official,  and  conscience  requires  Churchmen  to  do  it  only 
before  a  priest  in  baptism. 

We  know  very  well  what  is  behind  all  this  transparent 
hypocrisy.  What  Churchmen,  whether  Anglican  or  Catholic, 
want  to  come  to  is  this,  that  there  can  be  no  marriage  without 
the  sacerdotal  consecration  and  the  theological  sacrament. 
They  want  to  seize  upon  the  fundamental  institution  of  civil 
society  as  an  indirect  engine  of  spiritual  propaganda.  This 
is  merely  the  old  mediaeval  intolerance  which  we  have  swept 
away  for  ever.  It  is  Torquemada  and  James  II.  and  the 
rest  of  the  persecuting  fanaticism  in  a  new  form.  Here  we 
will  fight  it  out  to  the  death.  Marriage  is  the  great  universal 
foundation  of  human  society.  And  we  will  never  suffer  it  to 
be  degraded  into  being  made  the  back-door  into  any  Church. 

The  wise  and  simple  principle  of  the  Civil  Code  of  France 
is  necessary  and  applicable  to  all  Western  Europe;  and  the 
practice  of  France  is  a  model  and  example  to  civilised  nations. 
Even  in  France,  the  civil  marriage  is  greatly  deficient  in 


CIVIL    MARRIAGE  145 

dignity  and  in  uniformity.  In  England  it  is  made  a  squalid 
scramble.  What  is  needed  is  to  invest  the  legal  ceremony 
of  marriage  with  all  the  solemnity  of  a  trial  before  a  judge 
of  the  High  Court.  If  Churchmen  complain  of  having 
to  attend  a  common  clerk  in  a  frowsy  office,  the  answer  is 
that  civil  marriage  ought  to  be  made  as  impressive  and 
artistic  as  a  marriage  in  Church ;  and  the  Registrar  should 
be  made  an  officer  of  equal  rank  with  a  priest.  During  the 
Commonwealth,  Oliver  would  himself,  as  head  of  the  State, 
perform  the  marriage  ceremony,  in  full  uniform  with  his 
Bible  and  sword  before  him.  We  should  not  like  the  King 
in  epaulets  to  marry  us ;  but  the  idea  is  suggestive,  and  Oliver 
was  a  genuine  Independent  or  spiritual  anarchist.  After  the 
legal  ceremony,  the  couple  would  be  perfectly  free  to  resort 
to  any  religious  ceremony,  or  to  none.  They  may  defer  the 
religious  ceremony  as  long  as  they  please,  or  celebrate  it  as 
often  or  in  any  way  they  please.  They  may  treat  the  civil 
marriage  as  null  and  void  in  the  sight  of  God  and  the  Church. 
That  is  their  affair.  But  the  State  will  treat  any  mere  reli- 
gious ceremony  as  per  se  null  and  void,  so  far  as  civil  rights 
and  obligations  are  concerned. 

In  the  meantime  let  it  be  understood  that  to  Positivists 
the  religious  marriage  is  a  matter  of  religious  duty.  To 
Positivists,  Marriage  is  a  Sacrament  —  a  sacrament  of  pro- 
found importance  and  inestimable  value.  By  sacrament 
they  mean  the  solemn  and  public  pledge  to  fulfil  a  social, 
personal,  and  religious  duty.  In  the  sanctity,  indissolubility, 
sacramental  efficacy  of  Marriage,  Positivists  can  yield  to  no 
Churchman,  Protestant  or  Catholic.  To  this  aspect  of  the 
great  institution  I  now  turn.  My  first  purpose  was  only  to 
maintain  as  the  rational  solution  of  a  social  dilemma,  Civil 
Marriage  first  —  independent,  obligatory,  and  uniform. 


VII 

RELIGIOUS   MARRIAGE 

The  great  institution  of  Marriage  has  necessarily  a  double 
character  —  legal  and  religious  —  and  this  double  character 
must  be  guaranteed  by  two  distinct  authorities  and  by  sepa- 
rate rites  and  forms.  The  legal  character  of  Marriage  is 
indispensable,  uniform  for  all,  and  concerns  society,  the 
family  relations,  and  property.  The  religious  character  of 
Marriage  depends  on  the  choice  of  the  married  pair,  may  vary 
according  to  their  conscience  and  communion,  and  ought  to 
be  entirely  independent  of  the  State  and  its  officials.  The 
attempt  to  combine  these  two  sides  of  Marriage  in  the  same 
act,  to  make  either  of  them  dependent  on  the  other,  to  fuse 
them  in  the  same  ceremony,  is  retrograde  and  full  of  abuses. 
It  has  caused  continual  strife;  and,  as  the  decay  of  the 
Churches  increases,  it  is  certain  to  cause  far  wider  convul- 
sions. 

The  entrance  of  a  new  life  into  the  community  or  into 
the  church,  the  exit  of  a  life  from  society,  and  its  passing  into 
the  world  of  the  departed  —  birth  and  death  —  also  have 
their  double  character,  their  official  and  their  religious  for- 
malities ;  and  no  one  attempts  to  confound  them.  The  State 
registers  the  birth,  and  it  registers  the  death,  of  every  one  of 
its  citizens  according  to  certain  legal  forms  and  by  the  hand 
of  its  own  servants.  It  leaves  the  family  of  the  infant,  or  of 
the  deceased,  entirely  free  to  choose  its  own  form  of  baptismal 
or  of  burial  service,  to  conduct  them  at  any  time  and  in  any 
mode  they    please,  or  else    to  dispense  with    religious    ser- 

146 


RELIGIOUS    MARRIAGE  14.7 

vice  altogether.  Precisely  the  same  rules  should  apply  to 
Marriage. 

But,  though  Positivists  are  the  first  to  insist  on  Civil  Mar- 
riage as  paramount,  obligatory,  and  uniform  for  all  who 
marry  within  the  State,  they  are  consistent  in  upholding  quite 
as  resolutely  the  Religious  Marriage,  the  sacrament  of  Mar- 
riage, and  the  sacerdotal  consecration  of  this  great  indis- 
soluble bond  of  society.  This  is  a  cardinal  illustration  of 
the  foundation  idea  of  Positivism  —  the  separation  and  co- 
ordinate authority  of  temporal  and  spiritual  powers;  coercive 
government  on  the  one  hand,  and  moral  and  intellectual  con- 
trol on  the  other  hand.  In  the  decay  of  social  organisations, 
Positivists  stand  almost  alone  in  being  equally  strenuous 
supporters  of  both.  There  are  many  schools,  both  absolutist 
and  socialist,  who  uphold  the  coercive  powers  of  the  State; 
and  there  are  many  religionists,  both  Catholic  and  mystical, 
who  wish  to  strengthen  the  power  of  some  Church.  Positivists 
(almost  alone)  desire  at  once  a  strong  State  and  an  indepen- 
dent Church. 

Positivists  are  certainly  alone,  amongst  the  non-theological 
schools  of  opinion,  in  seeking  to  make  the  religious  character 
of  Marriage  both  more  definite  and  more  impressive,  in 
treating  it  as  a  very  real  sacrament,  in  making  it  a  cardinal 
feature  of  the  religious  life.  The  only  criticism  that  they  offer 
to  the  ecclesiastical  view  of  Marriage  is,  that  all  existing 
Christian  Churches  treat  Marriage  far  too  loosely,  do  not 
respect  its  sacramental  importance,  and  allow  it  to  be  regarded 
as  a  civil  state  primarily  and  chiefly.  Even  the  Catholic 
Church  is  far  too  ready  to  play  fast  and  loose  with  its  "dis- 
pensations" to  the  high  and  mighty,  fails  to  rise  to  its  real 
spiritual  dignity,  does  not  treat  it  as  "indissoluble"  in  the 
spiritual  sense,  and  has  dishonored  it  by  the  vicious  institution 
of  celibacy  of  the  priesthood. 


148  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

As  to  other  Christian  Churches,  they  have  made  no  effective 
stand  against  the  demoralising  progiess  of  Divorce:  indeed, 
in  many  parts  both  of  the  Old  and  the  New  World  they  ac- 
quiesce in  a  practice  of  Divorce  carried  to  the  point  of  re- 
ducing marriage  to  a  union  during  pleasure.  The  Anglican 
marriage  service  is  futile  and  undignified  almost  to  the  point 
of  being  a  public  scandal.  And  there  is  hardly  any  side  of 
the  religious  action  of  the  Christian  Churches  where  they 
are  more  manifestly  in  arrear  of  the  best  moral  and  spiritual 
ideas  of  the  age,  than  in  their  obsolete,  insincere,  and  unc- 
tuous language  as  to  Marriage. 

We  say  that  Marriage  is  a  Sacrament,  meaning  by  that 
old  Roman  term  for  a  public  pledge  of  faithfulness,  the  pledge 
given  by  the  wedded  pair  that  they  will  love,  serve,  and  honour 
each  other,  and  also  the  Providence  that  they  acknowledge 
as  surrounding  their  lives.  The  public  ceremonial,  the 
presence  of  their  friends  and  fellow-believers,  consecrates 
this  obligation  they  take,  invests  it  with  public  acceptance, 
and  dedicates  it  anew  to  the  Human  Family. 

"Marriage,"  says  Auguste  Comte,  "is  the  simplest  and  most  perfect 
mode  of  man's  social  life:  the  only  society  we  can  ever  form,  where 
entire  identity  of  interests  obtains.  It  is  a  union  wherein  each  is  neces- 
sary to  the  moral  development  of  the  other;  the  woman  surpassing  the 
man  in  tenderness,  even  as  the  man  excels  the  woman  in  strength. 

"Marriage  joins  together  two  beings  to  the  mutual  perfecting  and 
service  of  each  other,  by  a  bond  which  no  shadow  of  rivalry  can  darken. 
Its  essential  purpose  is  to  bring  to  completeness  the  education  of  the 
heart.  Attachment,  in  which  it  begins,  leads  on  to  the  spirit  of  rever- 
ence, and  that  to  the  practice  of  goodness;  each  spouse  is  in  turn  pro- 
tector and  protected;  the  one  being  richer  in  affection,  as  the  other  in 
force. 

"When  two  beings  so  complex  and  yet  so  different  as  man  and 
woman  are  united  together,  the  whole  of  life  is  hardly  long  enough  for 
them  to  know  each  other  fully  and  to  love  each  other  perfectly. 

"The  marriage  bond  is  the  only  one  in  which  none  can  share,  and 
which  none  can  put  asunder;  and  so  it  outlasts  even  death  itself.  For 
time  which  tends  to  weaken  all  other  domestic  ties,  does  but  cement 
more  closely  this  one  —  the  only  human  union  of  which  we  can  say: 
'These  two  shall  be  one.'" 


RELIGIOUS   MARRIAGE  149 

The  Positivist  Marriage  seeks  to  impress  these  truths  on 
the  pair  themselves  and  ^n  all  others  who  attend  the  cere- 
mony: teaching  that  Marriage,  rightly  understood,  is  the 
great  social  instrument  of  religion;  the  final  act  of  moral 
education  for  the  man  and  for  the  woman;  the  link  between 
Person  and  Humanity ;  the  stepping-stone  from  the  individual 
self  to  the  social  community.  The  Home,  centred  in  Mar- 
riage, is  the  image  or  rudimentary  type  of  Humanity,  with 
its  mottoes  of  Love,  Order,  and  Progress  —  Love  being  the 
originating  principle  of  marriage;  Order,  or  the  due  ordering 
of  the  Home  and  its  mutual  duties  the  basis;  the  moral 
progress  of  husband  and  wife  in  mutual  sympathy  and  co- 
operation being  the  end  of  Marriage.  The  two  dangers 
which  beset  marriage  in  our  own  day  are :  — ■  first,  the  in- 
creasing facilities  for  Divorce;  and  secondly,  the  increasing 
tendency  of  women  to  forsake  the  moral  direction  of  the 
Family  and  of  the  Home  for  the  vain  competition  in  the 
practical  labour  of  man.  There  is  everywhere  in  democratic 
societies  a  movement  to  render  Divorce  common,  and  re- 
marriage a  matter  of  course.  And  the  note  of  modern  free- 
thought  is  the  assimilation  of  all  functions  of  man  and  woman. 
Both  tendencies  must  be  fatal  to  true  marriage.  The  first 
saps  the  very  idea  of  permanent  union:  the  second  poisons 
the  moral  purpose  of  Marriage  itself.  The  task  of  Positivism 
is  to  restore  the  institution  of  Marriage  which  even  Catho- 
lic Christianity  does  not  adequately  defend.  Its  essential 
conditions  are  —  the  exclusive  and  indissoluble  form  of 
Marriage,  and  the  setting  free  the  wife  to  be  the  moral  Head 
of  the  Home. 

Marriage  is  the  eternal  devotion  of  one  man  to  one  woman 
—  a  bond  which  no  one  can  put  asunder  and  which  normally 
should  survive  death  itself.  To  reject  this  last  condition  is 
to  deny  the  continuance  of  a  spiritual  life  for  a  day  beyond 


150  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  limits  of  corporal  life  on  earth.  Any  view  of  the  pro- 
longation of  a  moral  and  spiritual  being  beyond  death  must 
necessarily  involve  the  spiritual  prolongation  of  the  Marriage 
union.  We  have  abstained  both  at  Newton  Hall  and  in 
Paris  from  exacting  any  formal  Pledge  from  those  who  accept 
Positivist  Marriage  that  they  will  never  enter  into  a  second 
union :  for  we  are  not  prepared  to  impose  vows  on  a  distant 
future.  We  leave  the  married  pair  free  to  act  on  their  mature 
judgment  by  the  light  of  a  free  conscience,  impressing  on  them 
at  the  great  crisis  of  their  moral  life,  in  the  very  ceremony 
of  Marriage  itself,  that  this  obligation  of  indissoluble  Mar- 
riage is  bound  up  with  the  foundation  of  our  faith. 

The  Marriage  Service  which  has  been  used  in  Newton 
Hall  thus  sums  up  our  conception  of  this  institution. 

May  this  new  Home  be  a  source  of  Happiness  and  Goodness  within, 
of  strength  and  an  example  without.  May  the  Master  of  this  new 
Household  make  it  a  pattern  of  Industry,  Good  Order,  and  Moral 
Well-being,  in  all  the  acts  of  a  good  citizen  and  a  just  Head  of  an  honour- 
able Family.  May  the  Mistress  of  this  new  household  make  it  a  pattern 
of  Tenderness,  Purity,  and  Devotion,  in  all  the  things  that  belong  to 
true  and  perfect  wife.  And  if  this  Household  shall  hereafter  be  blessed 
with  children,  may  they  be  trained  up  in  all  things  that  belong  to  love 
and  goodness;  first  by  their  Mother,  then  by  both  Parents  equally,  till 
at  last  they  be  worthy  to  enter  into  the  training  and  the  Service  of  Society. 
Thus  we  would  trust  that  all  the  great  principles  of  our  Faith  may  be 
here  expressed  and  illustrated  afresh.  May  all  they  of  this  Household, 
resting  on  good  Order,  inspired  by  Love,  and  striving  after  moral  Im- 
provement, be  seen  for  ever  to  Live  for  others,  and,  as  they  Live  openly, 
may  they  live  in  the  spirit  of  Order  and  of  Progress  —  so  that  a  new  and 
worthy  Family  may  be  this  day  added  to  our  country;  imaging  to  us 
all,  whilst  it  realises  and  prospers  in,  the  great  life  of  Humanity  itself. 


VIII 

MARRIAGE  LAW  CONFLICTS 

The  questions  about  Civil  and  Religious  Marriage  are 
again  in  an  acute  stage,  and  have  received  a  new  phase  by 
the  important  decision  of  the  present  Bishop  of  London, 
that  he  will  visit  with  his  displeasure  any  of  his  clergy  who 
should  celebrate  the  remarriage  of  a  person  against  whom 
a  decree  of  divorce  has  been  pronounced.  By  this  act  it  would 
seem  that  the  Church  takes  up  a  ground  opposed  to  that  of 
the  law  and  also  to  that  of  average  current  opinion.  The 
marriage  law  and  the  law  courts  put  no  difficulty  in  the  way 
of  the  remarriage  of  any  divorced  person ;  and  public  opinion 
certainly  favours  it,  especially  where  it  promises  a  new  life 
of  happiness,  or  an  act  of  reparation.  It  may  surprise  some 
readers  to  be  told  that  the  Positivist  theory  of  marriage  offers 
the  only  reasonable  and  final  solution  of  this  problem.  And 
it  may  surprise  them  still  more  to  be  told  that  the  Positivist 
in  this  matter  sides  with  the  Churchman  and  the  Catholic 
against  any  religious  consecration  of  such  a  marriage. 

The  revival  of  bitter  controversies  about  remarriage  after 
divorce,  or  with  a  sister  of  a  deceased  wife,  makes  it  opportune 
to  review  the  whole  problem :  — 

i.   Marriage  has  a  double  character:   legal  and  religious. 

2.  There  should  therefore  be  a  double  ceremony,  each 
quite  distinct. 

3.  The  legal  ceremony  must  be  compulsory,  uniform, 
general. 

4.  The  religious  ceremony  should  conform  to  the  rules 


152  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

accepted  by  the  communion  to  which  the  parties  belong,  or 
to  the  individual  conscience. 

5.  The  religious  ceremony  should  be  entirely  at  the  option 
of  the  parties. 

6.  It  should  have  no  legal  effect  or  conditions. 

7.  Every  communion,  and  every  minister,  should  be  equally 
free  to  confer  or  to  withhold  such  ceremony. 

The  bitter  struggle  about  the  law  of  marriage  arises  from 
the  effort  to  combine  the  legal  and  the  religious  side  of  marriage 
in  a  single  rite.  The  State  still  hands  over  one  of  its  funda- 
mental duties  to  a  number  of  contending  sects.  The  Church 
still  strives  to  maintain  an  obsolete  monopoly,  and  to  enforce 
the  substitution  of  a  theological  for  a  political  sanction. 
Both  State  and  Church  are  dishonoured  by  the  struggle. 
Law,  order,  and  consciences  are  equally  offended. 

I.  The  State  has  the  highest  interest  in  maintaining  a 
uniform,  public,  simple  form  of  lawful  marriage.  Property, 
family  rights,  personal  duties  and  liabilities,  all  hang  thereon. 
In  the  battle  of  a  hundred  sects  and  the  growing  distrust 
of  theology,  it  is  a  fatal  error  for  the  State  to  abdicate  its 
task  in  favour  of  discordant  Churches,  and  to  suffer  them  to 
keep  its  registers.  The  State  is  bound  to  require  as  a  con- 
dition of  legal  marriage  a  definite,  public,  uniform  rite. 
To  this  the  State  must  eventually  resort. 

II.  To  a  very  large  majority  of  English  men,  and  to  almost 
all  English  women,  marriage  seems  to  demand  a  religious 
sanction  of  some  kind,  over  and  above  any  legal  sanction. 
This  is  entirely  the  Positivist  theory  and  settled  practice. 
And  the  religious  character  of  marriage  is  carried  even 
further  by  us  than  by  any  Christian  Church. 

III.  As  the  legal  consequences  of  marriage  upon  property, 
family,  and  personal  rights  are  necessarily  binding  on  all 
persons  whatever  their  opinions,   religion,   or   Church,   the 


MARRIAGE    LAW   CONFLICTS  1 53 

legal  rite  must  be  obligatory,  uniform,  and  technical,  with 
a  ceremony  at  once  simple,  official,  and  formal.  It  is  an 
idle  prejudice,  or  an  insolent  pretension,  to  assert  that  sub- 
mitting to  this  legal  formality  can  offend  conscience  any 
more  than  an  official  certificate  of  birth  or  of  death.  Birth, 
marriage,  death  are  events  of  which  the  interests  of  the  public 
demand  strict  official  registration  and  publicity.  For  any 
Church  to  demand  that  the  legal  character  of  marriage  can 
only  be  created  by  religious  consecration  is  an  arrogant  rem- 
nant of  superstition. 

IV.  Every  community  which  attaches  any  value  to  re- 
ligion in  any  form  will  naturally  insist  on  giving  a  religious 
character  to  marriage.  The  effects  of  marriage  both  on  per- 
sonal life  and  social  relations  are  so  obvious  and  important 
that  marriage  is  necessarily  bound  up  with  the  root  ideas  of 
religion  in  any  form.  Positivism  not  only  actively  supports 
the  essentially  religious  character  of  marriage,  but  it  seeks 
to  develop  this  religious  character  in  ways  unattempted  by 
any  Church,  even  by  the  Catholic  Church  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  In  the  first  place,  Positivism  not  only  frankly  accepts 
the  lay  ceremony  of  legal  marriage  as  indispensable,  but 
insists  on  it  as  a  necessary  preliminary  rite.  Next,  it  insists 
on  the  purely  voluntary  character  of  the  religious  ceremony  — 
voluntary  on  both  sides  —  the  Church  being  as  free  to  refuse, 
as  the  parties  are  free  to  dispense  with,  any  religious  con- 
secration, if  they  please. 

To  Positivists,  Marriage,  in  its  religious  side,  is  a.  Sacrament 
—  meaning  thereby  a  public  pledge  by  the  wedded  pair  that 
they  will  love,  serve,  and  honour  each  other,  whereon  the 
consecration  of  the  Church,  so  far  representing  Humanity, 
is  publicly  bestowed  on  them  to  stimulate  their  good  inten- 
tions. This  consecration,  or  sacrament,  is  not  conferred  as 
of  course,  or  as  a  mere  legal  formula.     Almost  every  Church, 


154  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Catholic  or  Protestant,  consents  to  marry  persons  of  notorious 
evil  lives,  or  even  hardened  criminals.  The  motive,  no  doubt, 
is  the  idea  that  marriage  obviates  sin,  and  the  Church,  by 
exercising  its  functions  of  marrying,  asserts  its  own  ascendancy 
in  private  and  public  life.  The  Positivist  Church,  disclaiming 
any  such  idle  pretensions,  and  fully  recognising  the  primary 
function  of  the  State  to  order  the  conditions  of  legal  marriage, 
is  free  to  judge  whether  a  religious  consecration  should  pro- 
perly be  added  to  the  legal  rite.  There  is  in  this  no  hardship 
on  the  parties,  and  no  abandonment  to  sin  if  such  consecra- 
tion is  refused,  for  the  legal  rite  is  open  to  all  and  is  sufficient 
for  every  secular  interest.  The  Christian  Churches,  however, 
as  a  matter  of  course,  perform  the  marriage  ceremony  for 
adulterers  and  rogues  indiscriminately.  And  a  parson  of 
the  Establishment  can  hardly  exercise  any  discretion  in  the 
matter.  The  Positivist  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  is  per- 
fectly free  to  exercise  an  efficient  moral  discipline  over  those 
whose  consciences  it  binds. 

As  to  the  burning  questions  of  marriage  with  a  deceased 
wife's  sister,  or  the  marriage  of  divorced  persons,  the  position 
of  the  Positivist  Church  is  perfectly  simple.  It  does  not 
extend  the  religious  consecration  to  any  second  marriage 
whatever ;  and  consequently  for  the  Positivist  Church  neither 
question  has  any  place.  All  second  marriages  remain  the 
exclusive  affair  of  the  State,  and  Positivists  frankly  acknow- 
ledge the  legal  marriage  performed  by  a  State  functionary  to 
be  perfectly  adequate  and  binding  in  law.  I  am  not  aware 
that  Positivism  has  ever  expressed  any  collective  opinion  as 
to  marriage  with  a  deceased  wife's  sister.  As  to  the  marriage 
of  divorced  persons,  Positivism  does  not  favour  divorce  at  all, 
except  in  the  case  of  a  criminal  condemned  to  penal  servitude 
for  life,  as  does  French  law.  It  is  not  necessary  here  to  en- 
large on  the  Positivist  doctrine  that  true  marriage  should 


MARRIAGE    LAW    CONFLICTS  1 55 

be  indissoluble  even  by  death.  The  whole  of  this  rests  on  the 
principle  of  subjective  immortality,  or  the  survival  of  the  soul 
in  the  spirit  of  others.  Positivism  offers  no  bar  to  the  legal 
remarriage  of  those  whose  consorts  are  dead ;  but  it  does  not 
offer  religious  consecration  to  any  remarriage  in  that  or  any 
other  condition.  So  far  as  I  know,  the  Positivist  rite  of 
marriage  has  never  yet  been  celebrated  in  the  case  of  any 
second  marriage,  either  in  this  country  or  abroad.  Re- 
marriage has  been  left  to  the  law,  with  which  Positivist 
religion  does  not  affect  to  interfere. 

The  very  large  question  of  the  persistence  of  the  marriage 
bond  even  after  the  death  of  one  spouse,  a  point  on  which 
the  Religion  of  Humanity  goes  far  beyond  the  Catholic 
Church  in  its  reverence  for  the  sanctity  of  marriage,  is  a 
matter  too  large  and  complex  to  be  touched  on  here.  It  is 
bound  up  with  the  Positivist  ideal  of  marriage  in  its  most 
sacred  and  profound  type.  The  marriage  rite  as  frequently 
performed  in  Newton  Hall  repeats  the  emphatic  words  of 
Auguste  Comte  thereon,  but  neither  in  Newton  Hall,  nor  by 
Pierre  Laffitte  in  Paris,  has  any  pledge  not  to  marry  again 
been  ever  demanded  of  the  married  pair. 

The  bitter  controversies  we  see  to-day  can  only  be  closed 
in  one  way,  the  recognition  of  the  double  character  of  mar- 
riage by  a  double  and  distinct  rite,  first  legal,  and  then  re- 
ligious. Positivists  heartily  support  those  who  claim  the 
freedom  of  a  simple  legal  rite  as  adequate  and  conclusive. 
They  as  heartily  support  the  claim  of  the  Churches  to  en- 
force their  own  freedom  to  give  or  withhold  religious  conse- 
cration upon  any  such  marriage.  It  is  a  striking  example 
of  the  power  of  the  great  Positivist  principle  —  the  indepen- 
dence and  separation  of  temporal  and  spiritual  authority. 


IX 


FUNERAL   RITES 

The  question  of  funeral  rites  and  the  disposal  of  the  dead 
is  one  which  touches  Religious  Reformers  in  a  very  special 
degree.  To  all  who  are  simply  nominal  adherents  to  any 
theological  communion,  or  to  all  who  are  simply  indifferent 
as  to  all  rites,  creeds,  or  customs  in  relation  to  the  dead,  no 
question  arises.  They  are  content  to  leave  such  things  to 
those  who  come  after  them,  or  to  those  who  care  to  occupy 
themselves  with  concerns  of  the  kind.  The  mere  Agnostic 
has  nothing  to  suggest,  nothing  to  object :  he  is  usually  in- 
terred with  Christian  rites :  and  eminent  Agnostics,  when 
pressed  as  to  their  wishes,  have  been  known  to  reply  —  What 
can  it  matter  to  me  what  they  like  to  do  with  my  bones? 

Positivists  are  in  a  very  different  case.  They  are  not  in- 
different in  things  religious:  they  are  not  content  simply  to 
conform  with  the  lip  or  to  bow  the  knee  in  the  Temple  as 
a  conventional  form:  they  are  not  Agnostics,  in  the  sense 
that  the  Agnostic  is  one  who  plants  himself  firmly  on  the  rock 
of  Ignorance.  Positivists  profess  to  have  a  religious  faith, 
adequate  to  guide  them  in  the  problems  of  life  and  death. 
Though  they  have  no  set  ritual,  they  have  a  decided  sense  of 
the  deep  reaction  of  public  expression  upon  inward  con- 
victions. They  seek  to  emphasise  all  the  great  phases  of 
human  life  in  their  relations  to  the  social  communion,  above 
all  the  relation  of  the  living  to  the  dead.  The  Religion  of 
Humanity  is,  on  one  side  of  it,  a  rationalised  and  spiritualised 
Worship  of  the  Dead,  in  so  far  as  it  seeks  to  order  the  life  of 

156 


FUNERAL    RITES  157 

man  by  reference  to  the  Past,  Present,  and  Future  of  Man- 
kind. We  must,  therefore,  regard  it  as  one  of  its  prime 
duties  to  invest  with  a  religious  sanction  the  close  of  life,  and 
the  rational  disposal  of  the  dead  by  the  reverent  care  of  the 
living. 

Theological  opinion,  indeed  current  opinion,  is  wont  to 
regard  the  disposal  of  the  dead  as  a  practical  test  of  conviction. 
A  man  who  is  willing  to  pass  out  of  the  world  with  theological 
blessings  and  to  be  buried  with  priestly  rites  is  popularly 
supposed  to  be  "reconciled"  to  the  true  Church,  whatever 
mav  have  been  his  avowed  opinions  in  his  days  of  health  and 
strength.  And  in  the  Sacramental  Communions  fraud, 
cruelty,  and  force  in  securing  such  death-bed  reconciliation 
are  thought  to  be  venial  acts  of  piety,  as  if  a  man  could  be 
saved  from  hell-fire  by  some  miraculous  talisman  or  hypo- 
dermic injection. 

There  are  special  difficulties  that  confront  all  non-Chris- 
tians. The  law  permits  only  "  Christian "  Services  in  parish 
eravevards,  and  most  of  the  available  cemeteries  are  con- 
trolled  by  Boards  and  clergy  nervously  afraid  of  any  innova- 
tion, of  anything  which  might  cause  public  discussion  and 
affect  dividends. 

Agnostics  are  said  to  be  at  liberty  to  put  their  departed 
brethren  in  the  ground  without  the  intervention  of  a  priest 
and  without  a  word  spoken.  But  anything  said  or  done 
must  depend  on  the  sufferance  and  accidental  consent  of 
trustees  and  committees  who  are  often  timid  and  prejudiced. 
As  to  cemeteries  of  their  own,  or  even  parts  of  cemeteries 
under  their  own  control,  Religious  Reformers  are  as  yet  not 
sufficiently  numerous,  and  not  locally  near  each  other  so  as 
to  make  this  feasible.  They  ought  to  bear  in  mind  that, 
unless  they  choose  in  their  lifetime  to  give  very  distinct  and 
formal  directions  as  to  their  own  burial,  they  may  become 


158  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

the  object  of  conventional  rites  which  cannot  be  anything 
but  a  mockery  of  their  own  professions,  and  which  must  cast 
a  certain  public  slur  on  their  sincerity  or  their  foresight. 

It  is  impossible  to  enter  into  details  or  lay  down  any  general 
rules  for  guidance  in  such  a  matter.  Each  case  depends  on 
its  own  special  circumstances  of  family,  place  of  residence, 
property  in  a  particular  grave,  and  various  personal  con- 
ditions. The  only  general  advice  that  can  be  given  is  for 
individuals  carefully  to  think  out  their  own  case,  and  try  to 
realise  what  might  happen  upon  his  or  her  sudden  death. 
And  then,  having  carefully  thought  out  the  probable  con- 
ditions and  defined  their  own  wishes,  their  duty  is  to  put 
these  wishes  in  definite  instructions,  and  make  these  instruc- 
tions known  to  and  immediately  accessible  to  their  near 
relations  or  friends.  Old-fashioned  and  half-hearted  people 
fondly  imagine  that  they  have  done  enough  when  they  can 
say  to  themselves  "that  they  have  provided  for  this  in  their 
will."  That  would  be  a  very  poor  security  to  trust.  It  may 
do  for  persons  with  settled  estates,  mausoleums  of  their 
own,  and  family  solicitors.  In  other  cases  arrangements  for 
a  funeral  are  often  made  within  twenty-four  hours,  long 
before  any  will  is  seen  or  heard  of.  It  is  quite  proper,  even 
for  those  who  have  but  small  estates  to  dispose  of,  to  make 
a  legal  will  as  to  their  last  wishes,  and  to  embody  in  this 
precise  directions  as  to  burial.  But  in  most  cases  this  latter 
will  prove  idle  words,  unless  these  directions  are  known  to, 
or  easily  and  always  accessible  by,  the  immediate  family. 
In  making  these  directions  we  have  to  remember  that  any 
sort  of  public  participation  in  interment  by  friends,  and  any 
attempt  to  speak  in  their  name,  must  absolutely  depend  on 
the  sufferance  or  accidental  inadvertence  of  the  authorities 
for  the  moment  controlling  the  graveyard  or  cemetery. 
Priests  are  not  disposed  to  surrender  one  tittle  of  their  ex- 


FUNERAL    RITES 


159 


elusive  rights  over  "consecrated"  ground.  They  have  often 
an  indirect  control  over  the  other  portion  of  a  public  cemetery; 
and  non-Christians  or  Agnostics  have  no  "rights"  —  except 
the  right  to  put  their  departed  friends  in  the  ground  without 
a  word. 

Anything  in  the  shape  of  a  non-Christian  ceremony  at  the 
graveside  is  thus  practically  out  of  the  question  —  partly 
because  it  must  be  at  the  will  of  changeable  and  timid  Boards 
whose  main  ideas  are  commercial,  tempered  by  prejudice 
and  convention  —  partly  because  our  climate  prohibits  any- 
thing but  a  few  hurried  sentences,  not  seldom  uttered  in  a 
storm  or  in  the  midst  of  a  most  unedifying  scramble,  which, 
in  the  case  of  a  person  known  to  the  public,  sometimes  be- 
comes a  mob.  The  Continental  practice  of  a  set  of ' '  orations ' ' 
over  the  coffin  is  justly  odious  to  English  habits,  and  is  re- 
pulsive to  all  sense  of  religion  and  reverence.  It  often  de- 
generates into  an  irritating  form  of  political  manifesto  or 
meeting.  The  use  of  the  Nonconformist  "Chapel"  depends, 
like  everything  in  the  commercial  cemeteries,  on  the  tem- 
porary sufferance  of  the  Board;  and  it  is  usually  quite  as 
distinctly  marked  with  Biblical  emblems  and  associations 
as  any  Church,  with  the  further  objection  of  being  bare  and 
ugly.  A  rite  in  a  "Chapel,"  which  professes  to  be  evangelical 
but  not  ecclesiastical,  is  necessarily  an  uncomfortable  make- 
shift in  a  wrong  place. 

I  cannot  see  that  burial  can  be  more  of  a  domestic  concern 
than  marriage,  or  the  presentation  of  a  child,  or  the  con- 
secration of  any  function  or  office.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems 
to  me  far  more  a  public  concern  than  any  other  act  of  our 
lives,  and  such  is  the  instinct  and  practice  of  mankind  in  all 
ages.  Positivism,  in  what  Comte  has  called  sacraments, 
has  immensely  increased  the  claim  of  religion  to  impress  with 
a  social  and  solemn  meaning  each  act  in  the  drama  of  human 


l6o  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

life,  and  that  even  more  for  its  reaction  on  the  community 
than  its  effect  on  the  person  himself.  We  cannot,  even  if  we 
would,  reduce  to  a  purely  domestic  concern,  as  if  it  were  an 
incident  like  disease  or  the  loss  of  income,  the  last  passing 
away  from  the  sight  of  men,  and  the  last  farewell  of  those 
who  would  bring  to  so  momentous  an  occasion  their  tribute 
of  love  and  honour.  Funeral  rite  of  some  kind  there  must 
be,  unless  we  are  to  crush  out  the  spontaneous  sentiments  of 
natural  man. 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  obvious 
and  inevitable  course  is  to  look  for  some  kind  of  funeral  rite 
to  evolve  itself  in  that  place  in  which  the  ordinary  meetings 
may  be  held.  There  the  deceased  has  been  accustomed  to 
join  with  his  fellow-believers,  and  there,  with  all  the  associa- 
tions and  habits  of  the  place,  they  can,  without  disturbance  or 
conflicting  emotions,  take  a  last  farewell  of  their  friend  and 
colleague.  In  my  opinion  the  presence  of  the  body,  or,  at 
least,  of  the  urn  containing  the  cremated  ashes,  is  a  very  im- 
portant and  natural  element  of  anything  which  is  to  distinguish 
a  funeral  ceremony  from  a  memorial  speech.  In  the  next 
Essay  I  have  considered  cremation,  a  practice  which  I  hold 
to  be  really  indispensable  for  the  social  and  religious  disposal 
of  the  dead,  and  the  only  mode  in  which,  under  the  conditions 
of  our  city  life,  we  can  visibly  retain  their  dust  in  our  midst. 
I  am  quite  aware  of  the  practical  difficulties  which  surround 
us.  But  many  of  these  difficulties,  it  seems  to  me,  spring 
from  our  inveterate  habits  of  placing  personal  and  domestic 
considerations  above  our  social  duties  and  loyalty  to  our  faith. 


X 


CREMATION 


There  is  a  grave  duty  incumbent  on  all  who  are  not  genuine 
Christian  believers  to  provide  for  the  decent  disposal  of  their 
own  remains  in  a  manner  worthy  of  the  faith  they  profess, 
and  I  have  touched  on  some  of  the  special  difficulties  that 
they  have  to  meet.  It  is  not  necessary  to  enlarge  on  the 
very  intimate  way  in  which  the  end  of  objective  life  and  the 
continuance  of  subjective  life  after  death  is  bound  up  with 
the  Religion  of  Humanity,  and  how  greatly  that  Religion 
tends  to  consecrate  the  social  obligations  involved  in  every 
marked  stage  of  our  active  life  upon  earth.  The  close  of 
every  worthy  life  puts  the  seal  upon  the  whole  career  amongst 
our  fellow-men,  and  opens  to  each  of  us  a  new  and  continuous 
existence,  even  on  this  earth,  in  the  memories  and  influences 
we  leave  to  survivors  and  descendants  —  a  continuous  ex- 
istence no  less  solemn,  and  far  more  real,  than  the  glorified 
indolence  of  the  conventional  Heaven.  In  point  of  fact, 
there  can  be  no  religious  duty  of  deeper  significance  in  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  than  the  solemn  commemoration  of  the 
final  close  of  our  visible  career  on  earth,  and  the  inaugura- 
tion of  the  invisible  and  unlimited  career  of  our  communion 
with  the  vast  organism  of  civilised  Humanity,  into  which 
every  worthy  life  is  incorporated,  and  by  which  and  through 
which  alone  Humanity  itself  exists,  works,  thinks,  and  lives. 
It  is  hardly  necessary  to  show  that  any  such  commemora- 
tion must  have  a  social,  a  public,  at  the  very  least  some 
congregational,  character.  The  instinct  and  practice  of  man- 
in  161 


l62  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

kind  in  all  ages  and  under  all  religions,  suffice  to  prove  that 
we  cannot  limit  the  disposal  of  the  dead  to  a  purely  domestic 
concern,  as  if  it  were  the  birthday  or  the  sickness  of  some 
private  person  which  need  affect  no  one  outside  the  family. 
The  fellow-believers  of  every  active  non-Christian  religionist 
are  deeply  concerned  in  the  close  of  his  active  co-operation 
in  their  midst,  and  in  the  opening  of  his  spiritual  and  purer 
influence  over  them  and  their  descendants  in  memory  and  in 
result.  It  would  be  an  outrage  on  the  deepest  sympathies  of 
mankind  if  we  attempted  to  proscribe  any  kind  of  ceremonial 
rite,  any  gathering  of  the  friends  and  colleagues  of  the  dead 
person  together  to  take  farewell  of  their  friend  and  to  give 
expression  to  all  they  feel  of  honour  and  of  regret.  Funeral 
rite  of  some  public  kind  is  a  necessity  of  human  nature.  It 
is  urgent  to  consider  how  best  to  adapt  such  a  rite  to  our 
circumstances  and  our  faith. 

The  Burials  Act  has  been  expressly  worded  to  exclude  any 
ceremony  in  "consecrated"  ground  not  of  a  Christian  kind, 
and  this  limitation  must  be  carefully  considered  as  strictly 
excluding  non-Christian  interment  in  "consecrated"  ground 
—  i.e.  in  any  burial-ground  under  the  control  of  priests  — 
unless  with  the  degrading  condition  of  complete  silence. 
Even  in  "unconsecrated,"  i.e.  in  public,  burial-grounds,  the 
use  of  any  chapel  is  purely  permissive,  undetermined,  and 
subject  to  theological  associations.  It  seems  to  follow  that, 
until  non-Christian  communities  possess  burial-grounds  of 
their  own,  with  their  own  chapels  attached  to  them,  they 
must  either  accept  such  housing  on  sufferance  as  they  may 
chance  to  find,  or  else  they  must  hold  any  definite  funeral  rite 
they  choose  to  have  in  their  own  place  of  ordinary  meeting. 
There  are  very  considerable  difficulties  at  present  in  the  way 
of  any  of  these  courses. 

The  enormous  extent  of  the  continuous  tract  of  houses 


CREMATION  1 63 

called  London,  and  the  distance  of  most  of  the  cemeteries 
outside  of  even  this  vast  area,  the  scattered  residences  of 
fellow-citizens  and  fellow-believers  in  this  London  (often  at 
distances  of  ten  or  twelve  miles  from  each  other),  the  fact 
that  many  of  them  have  family  graves  in  different  places 
and  have  laid  dear  ones  in  these  graves  at  different  times,  the 
objections  we  all  naturally  feel  to  run  counter  to  family 
affections  and  traditions  where  husband  and  wife,  parent  and 
child,  do  not  share  a  common  faith —  all  these  things  must 
retard  the  institution  of  anything  like  a  common  non-Christian 
cemetery  with  appropriate  buildings  for  any  funeral  rite. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  transport  the  body  in  its  coffin  from 
the  house  of  death  to  the  central  Hall,  and  thence  to  carry 
it  back  to  some  outlying  cemetery,  may  often  involve  a  very 
fatiguing  and  costly  journey,  amounting  in  the  whole  to 
twenty  or  thirty  miles,  beside  a  very  serious  demand  on  the 
strength  and  leisure  time  of  men  and  women  who  are  often 
over-worked  and  seldom  rich.  / 

I  have  a  very  strong  feeling  that  anything  that  professes 
to  be  a  funeral  rite,  but  is  carried  out  in  the  absence  of  the 
remains  in  some  form  or  other,  ceases  to  be  a  funeral  rite, 
and  inevitably  becomes  either  a  criticism  or  an  eulogium  of 
the  deceased.  I  have  myself  been  called  upon  to  speak  on 
the  death  of  persons  both  public  and  private  on  not  a  few 
occasions,  and  I  have  also  been  called  on  to  conduct  a  funeral 
ceremony  over  the  coffined  remains  both  at  interment  and  at 
cremation.  And  I  am  sensible  how  widely  different  is  the 
state  of  mind  of  the  speaker  and  the  whole  tone  of  the  cere- 
mony, when  the  body  lies  in  presence  of  the  community,  and 
when  it  is  absent  and  already  interred.  The  first  is  truly  a 
funeral  rite;  the  second  is  too  often  a  memorial  discourse. 
The  former  is  a  religious  ceremony ;  it  is  difficult  to  prevent 
the  latter  being  more  than  a  literary  criticism.     Here,  then, 


164  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

is  a  very  serious  dilemma  that  confronts  all  non-Christian 
communities.  The  present  state  of  the  law  and  of  public 
opinion  prevents  them  from  carrying  out  their  own  ceremony 
in  church  burial-grounds,  unless  with  "maimed  rites,"  and 
under  very  narrow  limits.  The  practical  difficulties  of  carry- 
ing the  remains  across  the  unwieldy  areas  of  modern  cities 
are  very  serious.  And  yet  a  commemoration  of  the  deceased 
in  complete  absence  of  the  remains  becomes  a  more  or  less 
critical  discourse  about  the  good  or  bad  qualities  of  the  dead 
person.  It  is  in  danger  of  becoming  an  idle  and  not  very 
candid  eulogy,  or  else  a  cold  and  not  very  sympathetic  criti- 
cism. To  the  outside  public  it  risks  sounding  untrue ;  to  the 
intimate  friends  it  risks  sounding  unkind. 

Now,  here,  I  believe  a  way  out  of  the  dilemma  may  be 
found  in  the  growing  practice  of  Cremation.  I  have  often 
urged  the  adoption  of  this  most  ancient  and  natural  of  all 
modes  of  disposing  of  the  dead.  To  non-Christians  it  offers 
peculiar  opportunities,  ^t  is  obviously  the  only  way  in  which 
men  can  dispose  of  the  corpse  with  absolute  security  to  the 
health  of  the  living.  And  the  Religion  of  Humanity  has  at 
its  base  the  religious  obligation  of  physical  health,  and  pro- 
tests against  the  morbid  follies  of  theological  uncleanness  and 
pollution)  vln  the  next  place,  with  the  enormous  development 
of  our  overgrown  cities,  Cremation  offers  the  only  mode  in 
which  for  most  of  us  the  sacred  remains  of  those  we  love  and 
honour  can  be  retained  in  any  reasonable  proximity  for  access 
and  visible  devotion.^ 

It  is  all  very  well  for  a  solitary  member  of  a  family  to  con- 
trive a  burying-place  within  reach  of  his  own  actual  residence. 
Alas!  in  the  practical  conditions  of  modern  life  we  are  fre- 
Vquently  changing  our  residence,  and  our  children  are  con- 
stantly obliged  to  separate  from  their  old  home  and  are 
scattered  across  a  huge  area.     There  are  no  permanent  homes, 


CREMATION  165 

\^no  fixed  localities  in  modern  life,  and  the  attempt  to  make 
a  permanent  family  grave  is  as  impracticable  for  most  of 
us  as  to  make  a  permanent  family  home.  /Lastly,  the  pres- 
ence of  the  remains  is  an  essential  part  ofany  true  funeral 
rite.  And  this  condition  is  often  a  practical  impossibility  to 
a  non-Christian  rite  of  a  complete  kind.  Here  Cremation 
offers  us  a  practicable  alternative. 

Burial,  unless  under  very  special  and  costly  provisions, 
necessitates  the  funeral  ceremony  within  a  few  days  of  death, 
with  all  the  difficulties  of  burial  arrangements  and  fatiguing 
calls  on  the  family  and  friends.  With  resort  to  Cremation, 
the  congregational  gathering  and  so-called  public  ceremony 
may  well  be  delayed  for  weeks.  I  would  very  much  prefer 
that  any  funeral  rite  should  be  held  in  presence  of  the  actual 
corpse,  and  that  this  rite  should  be  single  and  accomplished 
once  for  all.  The  Crematorium,  with  its  quiet  ground  and 
decorous  chapel,  offers  every  facility  for  a  religious  rite  that 
any  church  possesses,  without  any  distinctive  sectarian  em- 
blem or  character.  But  there  are  many  cases  in  which  the 
committal  of  the  body  to  the  furnace  and  the  public  con- 
secration of  the  ashes  in  their  urn  may  be  separated  in  time, 
in  place,  and  in  form.  It  may  be  convenient  to  make  the  act 
of  Cremation  an  immediate,  simple,  and  even  purely  domestic 
task.  All  the  details  and  requirements  for  this  have  been 
carefully  formulated  by  the  Cremation  Society,  to  which  its 
President,  the  great  surgeon  Sir  Henry  Thompson,  gave  so 
much  labour. 

The  papers  and  instructions  prepared  under  his  eye  ex- 
plain the  vast  social  importance  and  the  indispensable  con- 
ditions of  proper  Cremation.  When  the  ashes  have  been 
collected  and  placed  in  the  cinerary  Urn,  we  have  the  corporal 
remains  of  the  dead  one  more  truly  before  us,  and  far  more 
sympathetically  present  to  our  minds,  than  if  the  putrescent 


1 66  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

body  were  lying  distorted  in  its  narrow  case.  There  is 
neither  difficulty  nor  cost  in  removing  this  Urn  from  place 
to  place,  nor  in  consigning  it  ultimately  to  some  accessible 
place  of  repose.  It  is  forgotten  that  the  cremated  ashes  in 
their  urn  can  be  dealt  with  exactly  as  the  corpse  is  in  burial. 
It  may  be  placed  in  a  churchyard,  or  cemetery,  or  church, 
or  cloister,  or  in  any  public  resting-place,  with  or  without 
a  solid  monument,  without  danger  to  any  one,  and  without 
inconvenience  or  cost,  and  happily  without  the  indescribable 
horrors  of  the  lead  coffin  and  the  brick  vault.  We  are  told 
that  a  recent  burial  in  the  Abbey  was  the  interment  not  of 
the  body,  but  of  the  cremated  ashes^/fcremation  is  simply 
a  scientific  method  of  preparing  a  corpse  for  entombment  —  \ 
without  the  foolish  elaboration  of  embalming,  or  the  ghastly  -' 
absurdities  of  high-class  interment.  All  that  we  associate 
with  burial,  the  venerable  churchyard,  or  the  church  itself, 
the  Campo  Santo,  or  the  "Old  Yew"  of  the  poet,  are  just  as 
possible  after  Cremation  as  after  interment.^ 

To  non-Christians  the  practice  of  Cremation  offers  a  solu- 
tion of  the  funeral  dilemma,  where  it  is  practically  impossible 
to  arrange  a  funeral  ceremony  over  the  corpse  itself  in  the 
coffin.  If  this  be  held  in  presence  of  the  ashes  in  their  Urn, 
there  is  time  for  any  arrangement  which  may  be  desired,  the 
remains  can  be  brought  to  any  spot  where  the  ceremony  is 
held  without  trouble  or  cost,  and  the  scientific  Religion  of 
Humanity  will  give  a  new  proof  of  its  power  to  reconcile  sci- 
ence with  reverence,  to  bind  the  living  to  the  dead,  and  to  have 
equal  thought  of  the  Past  and  of  the   Future  of  mankind. 


XI 


CENTENARIES 

This  is  an  age  of  Commemorations  of  the  great  men  of  the 
Past.  It  is  true  that  there  are  always  weak  souls  who  are 
ready  to  go  off  into  false  enthusiasms  for  doubtful  and  very 
minor  heroes.  And  there  are  always  busybodies  and  ad- 
venturers eager  to  snatch  at  any  occasion  for  advertising 
themselves  and  running  some  purely  local  demonstration. 
So  there  are  in  things  of  Religion,  Patriotism,  Loyalty,  Phi- 
lanthropy, Science,  or  Art.  Indeed  in  most  good  things, 
and  in  most  right  practices,  there  are  bores  and  hypocrites 
who  have  their  own  objects  in  beating  the  gong  outside  their 
own  booth,  and  seeking  to  flog  up  the  public  into  enthusiasm 
of  a  paying  sort.  But  that  a  good  thing,  an  obvious  duty, 
may  be  abused,  is  no  good  reason  for  dropping  it,  and  for 
neglecting  a  real  obligation.  And  it  would  be  absurd  to 
contend  that  honour  is  not  a  bounden  duty  towards  those 
from  whom  all  we  enjoy  in  modern  life  has  come  down  to 
us,  or  that  there  is  not  great  moral  use  in  recalling  these  high 
examples  and  memorable  types  of  a  great  life.  It  is  simply 
history  teaching  men  morality  and  social  duty. 

There  is  all  the  more  reason  therefore  to  insist  on  sub- 
stantial titles  to  our  reverence  before  we  accept  any  suggested 
commemoration;  to  be  careful  that  none  such  degenerate 
into  affectation,  or  be  perverted  to  private  ends.  There  are, 
of  course,  the  mean  and  cynical  tempers  which  are  so  fearful 
of  being  caught  by  sentiment  or  imposition  that  they  look 
with  suspicion  on   any  idea  of  commemorating  any  great 

167 


1 68  REALITIES    AND   IDEALS 

man,  just  as  they  abstain  on  principle  from  subscribing  to 
a  charity  or  a  Presentation.  These  people,  who  will  not  go 
to  church  for  fear  they  may  be  asked  to  contribute  to  the 
plate,  must  be  left  to  their  own  consciences.  But  the  fact 
that  foolish  admiration,  local  ambition,  and  vulgar  touting 
are  only  too  common  in  this  world,  makes  it  a  duty  for 
reasonable  men  to  ask  for  solid  guarantees  before  they 
commit  themselves  to  any  suggested  commemoration.  To 
all  for  whom  these  occasions  are  bound  up  with  religion  and 
philosophy,  it  is  all-important  to  see  that  those  whom  we 
honour  are  worthy  of  honour,  and  that  the  honour  we  pay 
them  is  given  with  a  grateful  heart  and  sincere  conviction. 

The  Church  in  its  great  day  insisted  on  these  guarantees 
with  a  very  firm  hand  and  much  wisdom.  Before  any  one 
was  canonised,  he  or  she  had  to  be  accepted  by  authorised 
sentence,  and  this  could  only  be  pronounced  after  long  and 
thorough  examination.  The  Church  always  set  itself  against 
any  indiscriminate  manufacture  of  Saints,  and  in  its  best 
day  was  able  to  suppress  any  attempt  at  irregular  or  dis- 
honest consecration.  The  offence  of  the  Church  was  not 
so  much  in  its  liberality  of  canonisation,  as  that  it  recognised 
only  one  kind  of  merit,  and  that  too  often  of  a  morbid  kind. 
But  in  its  systematic  efforts  to  prevent  posthumous  honours 
being  given  without  examination  or  on  fraudulent  grounds, 
it  showed  all  the  moral  insight  and  practical  wisdom  which 
kept  it  for  several  centuries  a  great  civilising  force. 

The  world  now  is  not  willing  to  refer  these  questions  to 
Popes  and  Cardinals,  who  have  long  abused  the  credulity 
of  grateful  men ;  and  it  is  justly  indignant  that  Januarius  and 
Teresa  should  be  saints,  whilst  Alfred  and  Jeanne  d'Arc  are 
not.  But  though  the  Church,  even  in  its  best  days,  neglected 
nine-tenths  of  human  merit,  and  made  not  a  few  scandalous 
blunders,   and  in  its  worst  days  has  tended  to  make  any 


CENTENARIES  169 

"canonisation"  whatever  a  byword,  we  may  still  learn  from 
it  the  essential  conditions  of  any  right  honouring  of  the 
mighty  Dead  —  viz.  that  such  honour  be  honest,  enlightened, 
and  general,  and  that  those  we  seek  to  honour  are  worthy 
of  remembrance  from  generation  to  generation. 

This  was  the  essential  idea  of  the  '•'Calendar"  of  great 
men  and  women,  drawn  up  by  Auguste  Comte  fifty  years  ago 
with  the  view  of  impressing  on  the  minds  of  the  present  age 
a  table  of  their  chief  benefactors  in  all  forms  of  human  power 
and  virtue.  It  was  not  intended  to  be  definitive  and  perpetual ; 
much  less  was  it  intended  to  be  exclusive  or  negative.  It 
has  drawn  forth  warm  admiration  from  J.  Stuart  Mill,  and 
has  served  to  systematise  the  judgments  of  many  philosophers 
and  historians  who  are  sometimes  shy  in  acknowledging  their 
real  debt  to  this  great  synthetic  and  concrete  tableau  of 
human  evolution  in  the  sum.  At  any  rate,  no  other  general 
scheme  of  classification  of  the  world's  greatest  "worthies" 
has  ever  been  suggested;  and  the  pedantry  of  specialism 
contents  itself,  as  usual,  with  academic  sneering  at  particular 
names.  We  never  pretend  that  Comte's  558  heroes  and 
heroines  bind  the  future  to  honour  every  one  of  these,  much 
less  to  honour  no  others.  But  it  affords  men,  whether  they 
accept  Comte's  philosophy  or  not,  an  admirable  type  of  the 
kind  of  power  and  of  virtue  which  should  be  held  for  ever  in 
public  memory  as  benefactors  of  our  race. 

The  more  I  study  it  the  more  I  am  amazed  at  the  genius 
with  which  Comte  formed  so  great  a  series  of  personal  judg- 
ments about  so  vast  a  variety  of  achievements  and  capacities, 
when  we  consider  his  own  limited  study  of  special  science. 
As  Lafntte  told  me,  when  I  was  wondering  how  Comte  had 
gained  his  insight  into  the  spirit  of  /Eschylus,  knowing  nothing 
of  the  tragedies  but  a  bald  French  prose  translation  —  "these 
things  are  possible  to  genius."     Without  asserting  that  all 


170  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Comte's  judgments  are  just,  much  less  that  they  bind  the 
future  (indeed,  he  only  put  it  out  for  the  nineteenth  century), 
the  scheme  in  general  conception  forms  a  firm  and  suggestive 
type. 

The  idea  of  connecting  a  great  name  with  each  day  of  the 
year  was  of  course  borrowed  from  the  Catholic  Calendar; 
and  the  device  of  adding  "subordinates"  to  many  names 
for  leap  years  enabled  Comte  to  compose  a  general  list  of 
five  or  six  hundred  names  in  graduated  scales  of  four  orders. 
No  doubt  there  are  five  or  six  hundred  thousand  of  men  and 
women  worthy  of  our  regard,  but  the  human  memory  and 
the  human  faculty  of  enthusiasm  could  hardly  be  stretched 
so  far.  One  (and  occasionally  two)  names  for  each  day  of 
the  week  is  an  ample  and  reasonable  limit.  Now,  whether 
or  not  we  accept  Comte's  scheme  of  worthies,  it  is  a  useful 
guide  to  bear  in  mind,  that  a  few  hundred  names  of  great 
men  in  the  past  is  quite  as  many  as  the  average  man  and 
woman  is  at  all  likely  to  know  anything  about,  and  the  first 
question  arises  on  any  proposed  commemoration,  Could  it 
possibly  belong  to  any  such  list,  or  could  it  conceivably  be 
compared  with  the  great  names  in  such  a  list? 

Comte's  Calendar  of  great  men,  certainly,  has  reference 
to  the  whole  sphere  of  human  history  in  all  its  forms,  and  is 
designed  for  the  use  of  Europeans  in  general.  It  need  not 
exclude  national  and  even  local  commemorations  in  different 
countries  or  districts  of  those  to  whom  each  people  or  any 
province  owe  grateful  memory.  But,  even  in  such  purely 
local  commemorations,  regard  should  be  had  to  the  wider 
spheres.  It  would  be  mischievous  to  crowd  out  the  memory 
of  the  Alfreds,  Cromwells,  Shakespeares,  and  Miltons  with 
a  wearisome  excess  of  minor  statesmen  and  poets.  In  these 
days  when  every  active  mayor  or  alderman  expects  to  be 
presented  with  his  portrait  (even  though  he  have  to  pay  for  it 


CENTENARIES  171 

himself),  and  when  every  country  town  is  looking  out  for 
the  birthplace  or  the  tombstone  of  some  poet  or  soldier  whose 
name  has  lived  for  a  hundred  years,  it  is  well  to  remind  our- 
selves that  too  great  prodigality  of  minor  celebrations  must 
end  by  blunting  our  interest  in  those  which  are  a  solemn 
duty  and  a  natural  education  in  themselves. 

The  year  1899  afforded  a  crucial  example  of  this  truth. 
It  was  the  eve  of  the  thousandth  anniversary  of  the  death 
of  Alfred  the  Great;  the  three-hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
birth  of  Cromwell,  and  of  the  death  of  Spenser;  and  the 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  death  of  George  Washington. 
For  three  of  these,  at  any  rate,  great  efforts  were  made  to 
impress  on  the  imagination  of  the  public  all  that  the  world 
owes  to  these  great  creative  statesmen.  Beside  the  immortal 
memories  of  Alfred,  of  Cromwell,  of  Washington,  the  names 
of  minor  poets  and  politicians  fade  out  of  the  sky,  like  the 
lesser  stars  in  full  moonlight.  If  our  commemoration  of  great 
men  is  to  be  a  serious  and  instructive  thing,  it  is  all  important 
to  keep  in  view  relative  merit  and  due  proportion  of  contri- 
bution to  the  progress  of  mankind.  To  pay  fit  honour  to 
three  such  men  as  Alfred,  Cromwell,  and  Washington,  taxed 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  English-speaking  race  for  one  year 
at  least.  And  till  we  see  our  way  to  carry  out  such  celebra- 
tions worthily,  we  need  not  burden  ourselves  with  any  lesser 
national  heroes.  Little  Pedlington  and  Great  Mudborough 
may  raise  a  bust,  or  deliver  orations,  for  any  worthy  citizen 
of  their  own  they  may  happen  to  disco ver;  but  they  should 
not  ask  the  public  to  take  part  in  what  is  in  no  sense  a  national 
possession. 

The  commemorations  of  Alfred,  of  Cromwell,  of  Washing- 
ton, supply  us  with  excellent  lessons  of  the  great  educational 
value  that  such  occasions  develop.  More  has  been  done 
recently  to  teach   Englishmen   all  that   they  owe   to   King 


172  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Alfred  than  perhaps  was  done  in  the  thousand  years  since 
his  death.  Here  was  a  ruler  to  whom  England,  as  a  social 
and  national  unit,  as  the  land  of  one  special  type  of  soldier 
and  citizen,  owed  more  than  to  any  other  single  ruler  in  its 
entire  history;  in  the  fundamental  basis  of  national  life  and 
character  owed  more  than  to  the  Conqueror,  to  Edward  L, 
to  Elizabeth,  or  to  Cromwell.  He  was  a  man  also,  who  by 
virtue  of  his  saintly  candour  of  soul,  and  his  literary  activity, 
has  enabled  us  to  know  him  and  to  know  his  aims  better  than 
we  know  the  aims  and  the  soul  of  Julius  Caesar  or  of  Charle- 
magne. Yet  the  ignorance  in  the  general  public  of  the 
achievements  and  aspirations  of  Alfred  was  strange ;  and  men 
calling  themselves  men  of  letters  were  not  ashamed  to  declare 
that  they  knew  nothing  of  Alfred  except  that  he  burnt  the 
goodwife's  cakes.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  something  has  been 
done  to  enable  the  English  people  to  know  more,  and  to 
understand  better,  the  greatest,  noblest,  most  perfect  of 
English  heroes. 

In  the  same  way,  much  was  done  in  1899  to  stamp  on  the 
public  mind  the  true  story  of  Oliver  and  the  great  services 
he  rendered  to  our  nation.  Scores  of  books,  addresses, 
articles,  and  other  memorials  have  been  put  forth  on  the 
occasion  of  his  Tercentenary;  and  more  has  been  done  to 
teach  the  truth  about  him  than  in  all  the  years  since  Carlyle's 
memorable  work  appeared.  London,  which  long  has  had 
statues  of  James  II.,  some  Duke  of  Bedford,  Disraeli,  and 
half-a-dozen  Indian  soldiers,  but  no  statue  to  the  greatest 
citizen  England  ever  bred,  has  at  last  an  adequate  memorial. 
English  history  has  taken  a  firmer  hold  in  the  public  mind, 
now  that  the  infamous  blackening  of  Cromwell's  memory  is 
being  adequately  redressed.  xAnd  as  to  George  Washington, 
though  his  memory  concerns  in  the  main  the  people  of  the 
United  States,  it  is  obvious  that  the  sympathy  of  the  English 


CENTENARIES  1 73 

public  joins  with  the  honours  which  the  American  public 
pays  to  one  of  the  noblest  examples  of  soldier  and  statesman 
that  our  race  can  boast. 

There  is  one  condition  which  ought  to  be  observed  in  all 
serious  commemorations  —  to  recognise  anniversaries  of  the 
death,  not  of  the  birth  of  great  men.  To  observe  both  is 
needlessly  to  double  the  occasions,  and  to  introduce  essen- 
tially false  ideas.  The  birth  of  any  great  man  is  not  a 
national  event,  is  not  an  epoch  at  all,  is,  in  no  sense,  a  great 
crisis  in  history.  It  is  the  close  of  a  great  career  which 
alone  is  marked  by  contemporaries,  which  alone  concerns 
the  world,  and  which  only  history  need  record.  Days  of 
birth  are  private,  domestic,  or  theological  festivals.  Families 
may  observe  the  birthdays  of  their  children,  or  Christians 
may  celebrate  the  purely  fanciful  date  when  God  was  in- 
carnate in  the  Virgin's  womb.  But  for  practical  and  human 
affairs,  it  is  the  end  of  life  which  determines  its  place  in  the 
social  world,  and  such  remembrance  as  it  may  be  worthy  to 
maintain.  For  all  national  purposes  it  is  right  that  we 
reserve  our  commemoration  for  the  days  of  our  heroes' 
death ;  and  that  we  leave  it  to  theologians  and  heralds  to 
commemorate  the  birthdays  of  such  as  may  be  supposed  to 
have  an  interest  miraculous  or  genealogical. 

Another  useful  condition  would  be  to  recognise  only 
centenaries  and  not  lesser  anniversaries  —  at  any  rate,  ex- 
cepting in  some  very  special  case.  A  century,  of  course,  is 
a  purely  arbitrary  period ;  but  so  are  weeks,  and  months, 
and  jubilees,  and  most  of  our  periodical  measures.  But  it  is 
a  convenient  term.  If  the  memory  of  any  man  has  lasted 
fresh,  and  has  gained  in  force  after  a  hundred  years  from 
his  death,  there  is  a  fair  presumption  that  his  fame  is  real 
and  his  services  to  the  public  worthy  of  honour.  The  cen- 
tenary of  a  birth  is  nothing.     Each  centenary  in  succession 


174  REALITIES    AND   IDEALS 

marks  a  more  definite  title  to  permanent  honour.  The  late 
Senhor  Garcia  attended  the  centenary  celebration  of  his  own 
birth.  When  we  come  to  Millenaries  (there  are  superfine 
folk  who  grumble  at  the  word,  though  millenary  is  a  word 
quite  as  correct  and  quite  as  plain  as  centenary),  they  must 
always  be  rare  indeed.  And  the  millenary  of  King  Alfred 
offers  us  a  perfect  type  of  a  commemoration  which  is  emi- 
nently deserved,  due  by  long  neglect  of  ages,  morally  elevat- 
ing to  those  who  will  observe  it,  and  peculiarly  instructive  in 
teaching  the  best  and  most  important  part  of  history. 


XII 

MODERN   PILGRIMAGES 

Much  attention  is  now  being  bestowed  on  the  revived 
practice  of  organised  visits  to  historic  scenes;  and  several 
educational  bodies  have  lately  been  arranging  such  collec- 
tive acts  of  commemoration  and  study.  Pilgrimages  proper 
(apart  from  those  of  Catholic  pilgrims)  have  long  been  a 
special  feature  in  the  practice  of  Positivist  bodies. 

A  Pilgrimage  with  Positivists  is  always  a  real  commemora- 
tion of  some  worthy  servant  of  Humanity,  and  its  main  pur- 
pose is  to  deepen  the  sense  of  reverence,  and  widen  our 
understanding  of  the  services  of  some  great  life.  It  is  truly 
a  religious  act,  and  it  is  also  an  educational  instrument.  It 
is  therefore  essentially  "a  service"  in  itself;  it  almost  neces- 
sarily implies  an  address  or  discourse  to  give  point  to  the 
feelings  of  veneration,  and  to  develop  and  illustrate  the  his- 
torical lessons  enforced.  As  the  Catholic  Pilgrim  keeps  as 
a  festival  St.  Paul's  day  or  St.  Lawrence's  day,  and  visits 
the  tombs  or  the  footprints  of  martyrs  and  apostles,  so  the 
Positivist  visits  at  Stratford  the  birthplace  and  grave  of 
Shakespeare,  and  listens  to  the  story  of  his  life,  and  chants 
the  songs  he  loved.  The  feeling  is  really  the  same.  And, 
if  in  the  Positivist  Pilgrimage  there  are  no  sackcloth  and 
ashes,  no  penitential  psalms,  no  genuflexions  or  osculations, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  frank  enjoyment  of  beautiful  scenes 
and  joyous  gathering  in  a  friendly  meeting  —  the  difference 
is  due  to  the  far  wider  and  more  human  form  that  religion 
takes  in  the  Positivist  scheme  than  in  any  superhuman  and 

175 


176  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

theological  religion.  It  is  obvious  that,  with  the  infinite  roll 
of  Humanity  before  us,  a  Positivist  Pilgrimage  is  a  thing  far 
more  broad,  sociable,  instructive,  and  joyous  than  it  can  be 
to  any  votary  of  a  celestial  world. 

Positivist  Pilgrimages  began  in  France  almost  from  the 
time  of  Comte's  death.  Indeed  he  himself  instituted  his 
own  solitary  weekly  pilgrimage  to  the  grave  of  his  beloved 
friend.  From  the  day  of  Comte's  death  in  1857  until  now, 
his  followers  have  been  wont  to  make  genuine  pilgrimage  to 
his  grave,  and  now  to  that  of  his  principal  colleagues;  and 
this  takes  systematic  form  on  the  5th  September,  the  anni- 
versary of  his  death.  M.  Lafntte  soon  began  to  organise 
historical  Pilgrimages  to  the  birthplace,  residence,  or  tomb 
of  some  great  name  in  thought  or  action,  in  and  near  Paris. 
And  our  Newton  Hall  body  may  claim  to  have  developed 
the  practice  in  an  even  more  systematic  manner. 

For  many  years  we  have  now  carried  on  a  series  of  Pil- 
grimages having  a  double  object  —  the  commemoration  of 
great  men,  and  the  giving  a  vivid  interest  in  history.  On 
each  visit,  a  discourse  is  given  by  some  selected  speaker  on 
the  life,  work,  character,  and  services  of  some  chosen  hero, 
over  whose  bones  we  are  standing,  or  within  sight  of  his 
birthplace  or  home.  Such  an  address  is  a  combination  of 
sermon,  biography,  and  historical  lecture,  and  it  lends  itself 
to  every  mode  of  religious  reverence  and  of  practical  study. 
It  is  surprising  how  well  the  Positivist  scheme  contributes 
to  this  large  treatment.  Sometimes  we  visit  a  church,  an 
abbey,  a  palace,  a  ruin,  a  site,  it  may  be  a  gallery  of  antiq- 
uities or  of  pictures.  Sometimes  the  commemoration  takes 
a  musical  or  even  a  dramatic  form,  sometimes  a  pictorial  or 
antiquarian  aspect.  But  the  essence  of  it  is  always  reverent 
commemoration  of  a  great  benefactor  of  mankind,  plus 
systematic  study  of  his  life  and  character. 


MODERN   PILGRIMAGES  177 

The  list  of  those  whose  work  we  have  studied  on  the 
sacred  spots  covered  by  their  memory,  or  wherein  their 
bones  are  laid,  is  curiously  long.  It  comprises  Alfred, 
Cromwell,  Milton,  Bacon,  Harvey,  William  III.,  Penn, 
Shakespeare,  Fox,  Bunyan,  De  Foe,  Newton,  Locke,  Gold- 
smith, Harrison,  Halley,  Darwin,  and  many  others.  The 
longer  journeys  were  to  Stratford-on-Avon,  to  Paris,  to  Ox- 
ford, Cambridge,  Ely,  Canterbury,  Winchester,  Salisbury, 
some  of  these  visits  extending  over  several  days.  Frequent 
visits  were  also  made  to  the  Abbey,  the  Tower,  the  Temple, 
the  British  Museum,  the  National  Gallery,  the  South  Ken- 
sington Museum,  the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  the  Natural 
History  Museum,  Dulwich  College,  and  the  Museum  of  the 
College  of  Surgeons.  At  each  of  these,  some  great  name  or 
names  in  philosophy,  art,  science,  or  politics,  were  chosen 
for  commemoration,  and  a  lecture  given  in  sight  of  their 
works  or  in  presence  of  their  relics. 

I  cannot  pretend  to  be  more  impressionable  than  my 
neighbours;  but  I  confess  that  I  have  felt  a  fresh  glow  of 
gratitude  and  admiration  for  the  mighty  dead,  when  under 
the  trees  at  Horton,  where  Milton's  early  life  was  passed, 
we  read  Comus  in  parts ;  when  at  Stratford  we  listened  to  the 
fine  discourse  of  Mr.  Vernon  Lushington,  stood  over  the 
poet's  grave,  joined  in  the  service  of  his  parish  church,  heard 
the  songs  from  his  plays  by  Anne  Hathaway's  cottage  or 
under  the  woods  of  Charlcote;  when  at  Winchester  we 
followed  up  the  footprints  of  Alfred,  and  spoke  of  his  perfect 
life;  when  at  Oxford,  Cambridge,  Canterbury,  or  in  Paris, 
we  visited  spots  consecrated  by  the  memory  of  a  long  series 
of  great  men ;  when  in  our  annual  visit  to  Westminster 
Abbey,  we  speak  of  the  dead  whose  bones  lie  there,  or  whose 
deeds  are  associated  with  its  records  and  monuments.  These 
visits   are   real   Pilgrimages  —  true   acts   of  religious   com- 


178  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

memoration,  quite  as  sincere  and  heartfelt  as  the  Pilgrimages 
to  Rome  and  Lourdes. 

It  may  be  that  we  have  no  need  of  mourning  dress,  or 
rosaries,  groans,  tears,  and  misereres.  We  certainly  enjoy 
the  holiday,  the  lovely  groves  and  gardens,  the  Cathedrals, 
the  palaces,  the  galleries  we  visit  with  frank  and  unre- 
strained delight  in  beautiful  things  as  such.  But  a  human 
Religion  combines  all  this,  as  Greeks  and  Orientals  have 
ever  done,  along  with  genuine  reverence;  and  we  add  a 
scientific  interest  in  serious  history.  Our  Pilgrimages  have 
always  been  planned  on  a  thoroughly  popular  and  simple 
basis.  Upwards  of  eighty  persons  went  to  Stratford;  and 
some  of  the  London  visits  have  comprised  even  more.  Men, 
women,  and  children  have  joined;  and  persons  of  all  pro- 
fessions, from  judges  and  professors  to  tailors  and  seamstresses. 

I  have  nothing  but  good-will  for  a  holiday  trip  of  any 
kind,  even  if  it  be  only  Harry  and  Harriet  on  donkeys  at 
Hampstead  Heath,  or  "the  missus  and  the  baby"  on  a 
Gravesend  steamboat ;  and  I  frankly  admit  that  a  crowded 
third-class  carriage  on  August  Bank  Holiday  is  apt  to  be 
hot,  and  the  temperance  inn  at  a  market-town  is  apt  to  get 
stuffy.  But  a  random  holiday  trip,  a  mere  excursion  "to 
spend  a  happy  day,"  cannot  be  made  into  a  Pilgrimage,  nor 
be  worthy  of  the  serious  efforts  of  cultivated  men  and  women 
—  unless  it  has  some  definite  motive  as  its  inspiration  behind 
it,  which  our  Newton  Hall  Pilgrimages  have  always.  A 
visit  to  the  British  Museum,  to  Hampton  Court,  or  even  to 
Florence,  is  a  very  good  and  pleasant  thing,  if  it  be  well 
conducted  and  planned ;  and  much  may  be  learned  from  it, 
if  it  be  led  by  competent  guides.  But  a  Cook's  Tour,  even 
if  personally  conducted  by  M.A.'s,  M.P.'s,  and  Professors, 
will  remain  a  Tour,  and  cannot  be  properly  described  as  a 
Pilgrimage.     It  is  a  very  good  thing,   and  by  all  means 


MODERN    PILGRIMAGES  1 79 

should  be  encouraged.  But  romping  —  if  not  horse-play 
and  beer  —  will  press  it  close,  and  a  holiday  jaunt  it  will 
remain,  with  a  tendency  to  the  Bean-feast  rather  than  the 
lecture.  The  belief  and  the  practice  of  the  Religion  of  Hu- 
manity alone  can  make  a  true  and  serious  modern  Pilgrimage. 
Not  a  word  that  I  have  written  has  any  kind  of  aim  to 
discourage  holiday  tours  of  any  sort;  and  the  more  of  his- 
tory, of  biography,  and  of  art  that  can  be  put  into  a  holiday 
tour  the  better.  But  how  vastly  must  the  best  holiday  tour 
remain  inferior,  both  as  inspiration  and  as  education,  to 
a  Greek  gathering  at  Olympia,  Delphi,  or  Eleusis;  to  a 
mediaeval  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem,  Rome,  Assisi,  or  Canter- 
bury; to  a  Musulman  pilgrimage  to  Mecca;  or  a  Hindoo 
pilgrimage  to  Benares.  But  all  this  and  more  is  realised  in 
a  Positivist  pilgrimage  to  Winchester  or  to  Stratford,  where 
still  sleep  the  two  greatest  of  Englishmen,  in  the  spots  where 
a  large  part  of  their  lives  were  passed.  Positivism  in  this, 
as  in  other  things,  comes  back  to  this  truth  —  that  all  great 
things  require  as  their  inspiration  some  genuine  religious 
idea  —  and  that  the  truly  religious  idea  is  based  on  reverence 
for  Humanity  and  all  her  worthy  servants. 


XIII 

THE   USE   OF   SUNDAY 

The  successful  institution  of  "Museum  Sunday"  offers  a 
good  example  of  the  way  in  which  the  more  enlightened 
spirits  of  various  religious  bodies  are  finding  a  common 
ground ;  and  on  that  common  ground  Positivists  are  always 
ready  to  meet  them  and  to  work  with  them.  The  object  of 
the  Sunday  Society  is  not  to  weaken,  much  less  to  abolish, 
the  institution  of  Sunday,  but  to  restore  its  use  "as  a  benefi- 
cent social  institution."  And  with  that  aim  Positivists  most 
entirely  concur,  meaning  to  make  Sunday,  as  it  was  from 
antiquity,  a  spiritual  and  religious  festival. 

The  history  of  Sunday  and  of  the  Week  is  singularly  in- 
teresting, and  of  no  small  extent  and  complexity.  A  great 
amount  of  learning  has  been  expended  upon  both,  and  many 
things  are  still  doubtful  and  obscure.  One  set  of  teachers 
finds  an  astronomical  origin  in  the  Week;  another  traces  it 
to  the  Astrolatry  of  the  Asiatic  plains;  and  others  give  it  a 
purely  Scriptural  source.  According  to  Comte,  the  Week 
may  be  traced  back  to  quite  primitive  times,  and  has  a  very 
general  source,  essentially  based  in  natural  tendencies  of  the 
human  mind  itself.  That  is  to  say,  in  his  technical  language, 
the  Week  is  a  subjective  institution,  and  a  seventh  day  of 
rest  is  a  spontaneous  conception  of  natural  religion. 

There  is  no  need  here  to  dilate  on  what  Comte  has  said 
as  to  the  purely  subjective  values  of  the  prime  numbers  and 
of  seven  —  that  is  to  say,  their  reaction  on  the  elementary 
powers  of  the  mind  apart  from  any  external  observations  or 

1 80 


THE    USE    OF    SUNDAY  l8l 

concrete  applications.  He  declares  that  the  week  of  seven 
days  was  an  institution  to  which  there  was  a  general  tendency 
long  anterior  to  observations  of  the  planets  and  to  settled 
theocracies.  Abstractly  considered,  the  number  seven  repre- 
sents the  sum  of  the  first  three  numbers  plus  a  copula,  or 
rest.  It  also  consists  of  three  pairs,  or  of  two  triads,  each 
followed  by  a  seventh  unit.  Comte  declares  that  brutes 
seem  to  have  a  sense  of  three,  and  so  do  the  lowest  savages, 
not  being  able  to  go  beyond  this  number  without  mechanical 
aids;  and  thus,  that  i,  2,  3,  are  conceptions  which  all  minds 
can  grasp  apart  from  observations  and  without  the  help  of 
signs.  Man,  he  says,  has  an  instinctive  sense  of  distinctions 
up  to  three :  higher  numeration  is  the  result  of  effort,  reflec- 
tion, and  teaching.  Hence  the  lowest  mind  can  become 
used  to  ideas  of  three  pairs,  or  two  triads,  followed  by  a 
synthesis  or  rest;  but  it  is  liable  to  be  confused,  or  to  need 
artificial  aid,  if  the  enumeration  is  carried  further. 

We  know  by  experience  how  naturally  the  most  careless 
or  the  most  ignorant  can  instinctively  retain  the  sense  of  the 
beginning,  middle,  and  end  of  the  week ;  how  easily  they  can 
remember  a  recurrence  of  every  second  day  three  times  over, 
and  even  one  of  every  third  day  twice,  when  followed  by  a 
pause  to  distinguish  one  set  of  groups  from  another.  If  we 
advance  to  four  or  five  alternations,  or  to  three  or  four 
triads,  it  involves  an  effort  of  thought  and  reference  to  a 
calendar,  of  which  the  lowest  intelligences  are  incapable. 
The  great  rival  of  the  Week  is  the  Decade.  But  the  Decade 
is  a  period  too  long  for  the  most  ignorant  masses;  they 
could  not  remember  when  was  its  middle  or  its  end.  Take 
a  day  of  rest  off  the  Decade,  then  the  working  week  of  nine 
days  could  be  divided  into  three  triads  —  which  is  too  much 
—  but  not  into  pairs  at  all.  The  Decade  may  be  divided 
into  pairs  or  alternations,  but  not  into  triads  at  all.     The 


1 82  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

working  week  of  six  days  will  divide  into  pairs  and  into 
triads,  and  it  is  closed  by  a  "synthesis"  —  a  pause  —  a  day 
of  rest.  The  simple  groups,  the  simplest  of  all  groups, 
pairs  and  triads,  are  universally  useful,  instinctively  remem- 
bered, and  conceivable  by  the  lowest  and  rudest  intelligence. 
Such  is  the  subjective  origin  of  the  Week  of  seven  days. 

An  immense  deal  of  learning  has  been  expended  in  trac- 
ing the  origin  of  the  Week  to  the  Planets,  to  the  phases  of 
the  Moon,  and  to  the  six  days  of  Creation.  Unquestion- 
ably, the  seven  days  of  the  Week  were,  from  very  ancient 
times  and  over  vast  periods  of  time,  associated  with  the  five 
great  planets  known  of  old  plus  the  Sun  and  the  Moon,  and 
they  still  bear  the  planetary  names.  The  phases  of  the 
Moon  have  a  certain  correspondence  with  the  Weeks;  and 
undoubtedly  the  Jewish  ordinances  and  the  Jewish  Scrip- 
tures have  been  the  most  powerful  agencies  in  stereotyping 
the  institution  of  the  Week.  It  seems-  quite  certain  that  the 
six  days  of  Creation  were  derived  in  Scriptural  story  from 
the  six  working  days  of  the  Week ;  and  not  the  Week  from 
the  Cosmogony.  The  correspondence  of  the  Week  and  the 
phases  of  the  Moon  is  far  from  exact ;  and  the  Week  existed 
as  an  institution  apart  from  planetary  observations.  The 
truth  would  seem  to  be  that  the  Week  was  a  subjective 
creation  of  the  human  mind  dealing  with  the  simplest  proper- 
ties of  the  earliest  numbers.  But  this  spontaneous  institu- 
tion was  immensely  strengthened  —  first :  by  its  association 
with  religious  observances  of  New  Moons  and  Full  Moons; 
much  later  by  association  with  what  were  called  the  Seven 
Planets ;  and  the  historical  efficiency  and  social  observance 
of  the  Week  has  been  immensely  stimulated  and  fortified  by 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 

If  the  Week  had  a  planetary  origin,  why  was  it  not  instituted 
by  the  Egyptians  who  had  far  greater  astronomical  interests 


THE    USE    OF    SUNDAY  183 

than  the  Jews?  The  Egyptians  divided  their  month  by 
decades,  as  did  the  Greeks.  But  then  the  Egyptians  paid 
religious  observance  to  New  Moons  and  Full  Moons  which 
involve  periods  of  about  a  fortnight.  To  divide  this  period 
was  to  establish  the  Week.  The  Roman  Calendar,  which 
was  (no  doubt  purposely)  kept  irregular  and  complicated, 
had  certain  approximations  to  periods  of  seven  and  fourteen 
days;  and  these  were  possibly  quite  spontaneous.  In  four 
months  of  the  Roman  year  the  Nones  fell  on  the  seventh 
day.  In  the  same  months,  the  Ides  (i.e.  the  Dividers)  fell 
on  the  fifteenth  day.  In  the  other  eight  months  of  the  year, 
the  Ides  fell  on  the  thirteenth  day.  And  throughout  the 
Roman  Year  there  were  always  seven  clear  days  between 
the  Nones  and  the  Ides.  The  profoundly  basic  institution 
of  the  Week  has  been  formed  and  built  up  by  a  combination 
of  forces.  Originating  in  the  instinctive  powers  of  the 
human  mind,  it  was  strengthened  by  astrology,  developed 
by  scientific  astronomy,  and  consecrated  by  Holy  Writ  and 
the  halo  of  Divine  Institution.  The  history  of  its  long 
struggle  with  the  Decade  and  its  ultimate  triumph  over  it 
in  the  Roman  world,  the  history  of  its  easy  victory  over  the 
Decade  at  the  French  Revolution,  form  instructive  chapters 
in  Social  Statics,  and  also  in  the  part  played  by  popular 
instinct  in  the  course  of  Social  Dynamics. 

The  history  of  Sunday  is  hardly  less  instructive  than  that 
of  the  Week.  This  beautiful  institution  was  originally  a 
real  day  of  rest,  a  festival,  a  day  of  joy  and  thanksgiving  and 
of  spiritual  exultation.  Twice  in  the  course  of  centuries  it 
has  been  perverted  by  Scribes  and  Pharisees.  There  is  every 
reason  to  believe  the  Sabbath  to  have  been  a  Mosaic  institu- 
tion ;  but  none  to  prove  that  the  Sabbath  of  the  later  rabbis 
was  instituted  by  Moses.  In  the  view  of  Kuenen  and  other 
authorities,  the  Fourth  Commandment,  as  we  have  it,  is  not 


184  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

in  its  original  form.  It  has  been  tampered  with  and  ampli- 
fied. The  Mosaic  law  instituted  a  weekly  day  of  rest,  a 
religious  festival ;  and  so  it  probably  continued  for  centuries 
down  to  the  return  from  exile,  when  Judaism  received  a 
sacerdotal  character,  and  the  Jews  became  a  sect  instead  of  a 
nation. 

The  Sabbatical  restrictions  were  made  constantly  more 
stringent  and  mechanical  down  to  the  time  when  Jesus  and 
Paul  repudiated  the  rabbinical  Sabbath.  In  the  second  cen- 
tury of  our  era,  "  Sabbatisers "  were  those  who  adhered  to 
the  old  superstition,  and  the  "Lord's  Day,"  the  following 
day,  was  made  the  Christian  festival.  This  certainly  did 
not  take  the  place  of  the  Sabbath.  It  was  a  new  festival 
rivalling  and  superseding,  but  not  reviving,  the  Mosaic  institu- 
tion. Both  days  were  observed  by  some  scrupulous  Chris- 
tians for  several  ages.  Under  the  first  Christian  Emperor 
in  the  fourth  century,  we  have  the  legal  establishment  of 
Sunday  as  a  religious  festival.  In  the  Code  we  have  a  con- 
stitution of  Constantine  (321  a.d.)  ordering  the  observance 
of  Sunday  —  venerabili  die  Soils  —  not  by  mechanical  absten- 
tions, but  by  rest  from  labour.  He  says,  that  in  all  courts 
of  law  and  public  offices  it  shall  be  kept  as  a  holiday;  and 
in  the  12th  title  of  Book  iii.  of  Justinian's  Code  we  have  a 
series  of  imperial  ordinances,  ending  in  closing  the  theatres 
on  the  "Lord's  Day."  In  the  Western  Church,  during  the 
Mediaeval  period,  Sunday  remained  a  day  of  rest,  a  religious 
festival :  not  a  fast,  and  anything  but  a  Jewish  Sabbath. 

This  was  broken  by  Calvinism,  which  for  some  three  cen- 
turies has  oppressed  large  parts  of  Protestant  Christendom. 
Calvin  in  his  Institutes,  dealing  with  the  Fourth  Command- 
ment (Inst.  ii.  8,  28),  says:  "The  end  of  this  command- 
ment is  that  we,  being  dead  to  our  own  affections  and  works, 
should  be  busied  in  meditation  of  the  kingdom  of  God." 


THE    USE    OF    SUNDAY  1 85 

But  he  does  not  seem  to  lay  down  any  special  rules  of  Sab- 
batical observance.  He  says  indeed  that  the  Fourth  Com- 
mandment "hath  a  peculiar  and  several  consideration  from 
the  rest."  As  a  profound  student  of  the  Bible,  Calvin,  no 
doubt,  detected  that  apocryphal  element  in  our  decalogue 
which  modern  orientalists  have  found  in  this  command- 
ment. But  the  "Sabbath"  of  the  Puritans  and  Covenanters 
is  the  result  of  later  glosses  upon  Calvin,  just  as  the  Sabbath 
of  the  post-exilic  rabbis  was  a  sectarian  gloss  upon  the  Ten 
Words  of  Moses.  Thus  the  Pharisaical  "Sabbath,"  that  is 
still  servilely  worshipped  by  some  Bible  Christians  in  Eng- 
land, in  Scotland,  in  parts  of  Northern  Europe,  in  America 
of  the  North-East,  is  not  even  of  Mosaic  origin.  It  is  not 
truly  Jewish;  it  is  a  corruption  of  Judaism,  just  as  image- 
worship  has  been  a  corruption  of  Christianity.  It  is  a  super- 
stitious invention  of  the  decadence  of  Judaism,  of  the  de- 
cadence of  Christianity. 

It  is  not  Christian ;  it  is  certainly  not  Catholic ;  it  has 
not  been  practised  by  the  bulk  of  Christians  nor  in  the  great 
ages  of  Christendom.  It  has  been  accepted  only  by  certain 
groups  of  Christian  dogmatists  for  a  small  part  of  the  Chris- 
tian era  in  certain  portions  of  the  Christian  world.  This 
perversion  of  Judaism,  this  revolt  from  Christianity,  this 
corruption  of  Protestantism,  is  really  a  reversion  to  the  me- 
chanical superstition  of  Polynesian  savages,  which  they  call 
Taboo.  Taboo  is  that  which  is  marked  off,  and  so  conse- 
crated or  forbidden.  Amongst  all  primitive  races  this  taboo, 
or  superstitious  separation  or  dedication,  exists ;  and  at  last 
it  crystallises  always  into  inane  and  degrading  formalities. 
It  has  often  been  remarked  that  the  rabbinical  Sabbath  was 
evolved  out  of  a  barbarous  form  of  taboo,  of  which  it  is  a 
degraded  survival.  What  is  often  called  the  "Christian 
Sabbath"  would  be  more  properly  named  the  "Protestant 


1 86  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Taboo."  The  idea  that  an  Omnipotent  Creator  and  a 
Saviour  of  Mankind  can  take  delight  in  seeing  men,  women, 
and  children  pass  twenty-four  hours  in  dismal  inertia  (for 
flesh  and  blood  cannot  endure  more  than  a  few  hours  of 
"spiritual  exercises")  — that  they  could  be  offended  by  hu- 
man beings  enjoying  any  beautiful  thing  —  is  an  amazing 
instance  of  the  survival  of  barbarous  customs  amongst 
civilised  people. 

But  we,  who  repudiate  the  Taboo  conception  of  a  Sabbath 
Day,  are  those  who  most  earnestly  desire  to  restore  Sunday 
as  a  religious  festival  and  to  keep  it  as  a  day  of  rest.  We 
are  as  much  opposed,  as  the  most  devout  Jewish  or  con- 
scientious Sabbatarian  can  be,  to  make  Sunday  only  another 
Monday,  or  day  of  ordinary  work.  We  are  equally  opposed 
to  make  it  another  Saturday,  a  mere  holiday,  like  the  statu- 
tory holidays  of  the  year.  For  us,  Sunday  should  be,  what 
since  its  institution  some  three  thousand  years  ago,  it  has 
usually  been,  a  day  of  rest,  of  religious  festival,  a  day  for  the 
true  culture  of  the  mind  and  the  spirit,  for  congregational 
communion  in  all  that  is  good,  pure,  and  inspiring  —  a  day 
for  educating  all  that  is  best  in  our  personal,  our  domestic, 
our  social  life. 


XIV 

THE   VETO   ON   DRINK 

I  propose  to  say  a  few  words  upon  a  single  definite  point 
in  a  very  broad  and  complicated  question,  and  to  express 
my  own  personal  view  without  attempting  to  dogmatise  for 
others.  I  desire  to  assert  a  principle  and  not  to  discuss  any 
special  agitation  or  Bill,  much  less  to  argue  the  drink  trade 
on  party  grounds;  and  I  shall  purposely  put  aside  subordi- 
nate practical  questions  arising  out  of  temporary  and  local 
conditions.  The  social  obligations  that  group  round  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  are  not  local,  nor  are  they  national; 
and  they  are  independent  of  climate,  race,  and  the  habits  of 
each  local  society.  I  wish  to  deal  with  one  supreme  moral 
and  social  principle  which  should  govern  all  that  we  do  and 
say  in  practical  legislation. 

That  principle  is,  that  the  enforcement  of  a  moral  practice 
by  legal  coercion  upon  the  vote  of  any  majority  whatever,  is 
of  the  essence  of  tyranny  and  has  in  it  all  the  evil  of  religious 
persecution.  It  is  an  attempt  to  effect  by  force  and  law  a 
moral  and  social  reform  which  can  only  be  healthily  pro- 
moted by  moral  and  spiritual  agencies.  It  involves  that 
abandonment  of  moral  effort  for  material  penalties  which  is 
one  of  the  most  fatal  tendencies  of  our  age,  a  tendency 
which  brutalises  government  whilst  it  discredits  religion. 
The  great  triumph  of  Christianity,  as  Comte  has  shown 
more  powerfully  than  any  preacher  of  the  Gospel,  was  to 
separate  the  sphere  of  moral  and  spiritual  influence  from 
the  iron  grip  of  the  judge  and  the  policeman.     Positivism  is, 

187 


1 88  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

in  its  essence,  a  revival  of  the  eternal  problem,  how  to  found 
a  spiritual  power  apart  from  any  material  power.  And  on 
that  ground  it  has  steadfastly  opposed  all  State  religions, 
all  compulsory  orthodoxy,  all  enforced  education,  all  morality 
by  Act  of  Parliament,  and  virtue  appraised  by  the  civil 
magistrate.  It  is  for  teachers,  preachers,  and  philanthropists 
to  make  men  sober,  chaste,  temperate,  unselfish  and  indus- 
trious. It  is  for  the  magistrate  and  police  to  punish  dis- 
order, crime,  all  forms  of  recognised  offences  and  personal 
injuries,  material,  civil,  or  moral.  On  this  ground,  which 
is  the  foundation  of  civil  and  religious  government,  it  is 
tyranny  to  penalise  habits  which  masses  of  good  and  wise 
men  regard  as  innocent  and  even  salutary.  For  my  part,  I 
look  on  any  ulterior  aim  of  abolishing  alcohol  by  statute  as 
an  insidious  form  of  spiritual  tyranny. 

Though  the  venom  of  fanaticism  is  not  to  be  diverted  by 
any  proviso  or  disclaimer,  I  wish  to  make  it  clear  that  I  am 
not  suggesting  a  word  against  stringent  regulations  of  the 
public  sale  of  alcohol,  and  of  all  public  places  where  it  is 
served;  nor  against  any  penalties  on  public  intoxication,  or 
on  acts  committed  under  the  influence  of  drink,  or  on  incite- 
ment and  connivance  to  drunkenness.  It  is  a  practical  ques- 
tion for  which  much  may  be  urged,  whether  great  reforms 
in  law  and  administration  are  not  still  needed.  It  may  be 
desirable  to  strengthen  the  law  making  intoxication  in  pub- 
lic a  crime.  Intoxication  in  public  stands  on  the  same 
footing  as  a  public  act  of  indecency,  or  the  public  use  of  a 
dangerous  beast.  To  encourage  or  to  allow  drunkenness  in 
any  public  resort  may  fairly  be  made  a  serious  crime  in  those 
responsible  for  its  good  conduct.  And  if  the  tavern-keeper 
is  the  mere  agent  of  the  drink  merchant,  it  may  be  a  further 
duty  to  send  the  drink  merchant  himself  to  prison,  when 
duly  affected  with  legal  notice  of  his  agent's  offence.     It  may 


THE    VETO    ON    DRINK  1 89 

be  high  time  to  deprive  the  magistracy  of  powers  which  they 
have  sometimes  abused  in  the  interest  of  brewers,  as  they 
have  in  the  interest  of  game-preservers  and  many  powerful 
persons  and  corporations. 

But  all  these  matters  of  public  police  stand  on  a  different 
footing  from  the  suppression  of  the  use  of  alcohol,  of  the 
traffic  in  alcohol,  of  the  public  retailing  of  alcohol  —  apart 
from  anv  overt  act  of  intoxication,  any  public  disorder  or 
personal  injury  due  to  it  as  a  direct  and  visible  consequence. 
And,  now  that  a  heated  and  ignorant  fanaticism  is  claiming 
this  power  as  its  lawful  due  in  the  name  of  social  morality 
and  well-being,  it  becomes  a  civic  duty  to  take  up  an  uncom- 
promising position  against  it.  This  is  the  more  incumbent 
on  free  and  independent  citizens  because  public  men  and 
what  are  so  comically  styled  "responsible"  statesmen,  in  the 
race  of  democratic  competition,  are  selling  themselves  to  any 
organised  body  of  voters.  No  goodness  in  motive,  no  zeal 
in  philanthropy  or  piety,  no  picture  of  the  horrors  of  alco- 
holism, no  statistics  of  national  loss  and  misery,  no  accumu- 
lation of  pseudo-scientific  authority,  should  blind  us  to  the 
monstrous  wrongfulness  of  any  attempt  to  suppress  alcohol 
by  law.  It  is  in  any  form  an  antisocial  tyranny,  degrading 
alike  to  the  cause  of  morality  and  religion. 

It  matters  not  that  many  worthy  men  and  women  trace 
most  of  our  vices  or  sufferings  to  the  abuse  of  alcohol;  it 
matters  not  that  some  hysterical  men  and  women  find  evil 
in  the  careful  use  of  alcohol;  it  matters  not  that  in  any 
particular  spot  they  may  be  a  majority.  So  long  as  an  im- 
mense body  of  citizens  of  all  orders  and  sorts  choose  to  use 
alcohol,  think  it  right  to  do  so,  and  cannot  be  shown  to 
offend  their  neighbours  whilst  doing  so  with  moderation,  it 
would  be  tyrannical  to  punish  or  forbid  the  consumption  of 
any  food  which  an  orderly  adult  thinks  it  desirable    and 


190 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


right  to  take.  To  deny  him  or  her  this  liberty  is  to  de- 
stroy moral  responsibility,  and  to  subject  private  morality  to 
Spartan  or  Hindoo  swaddling  clothes.  Every  law  that  vio- 
lates conscience,  by  imposing  either  conduct  or  opinion  re- 
jected by  just  and  wise  men,  is  an  act  of  tyranny  on  those 
whose  liberty  is  violated,  and  an  act  of  demoralisation  to 
those  whose  power  is  abused.  And  the  social,  civic,  and 
religious  mischiefs  flowing  from  such  tyranny  far  outweigh 
any  immediate  or  special  gain  in  moral  result. 

After  a  struggle  of  fifteen  centuries,  Western  Europe  has 
almost  adopted  this  rule  in  the  case  of  enforcing  religion  by 
penalties.  The  existence  of  our  own  movement  is  striking 
proof  how  complete  is  the  victory  in  England  of  religious 
tolerance.  Now  that  the  last  embers  of  theological  persecu- 
tion are  burnt  out,  a  fanaticism  as  sincere  and  quite  as  blind 
as  that  of  any  Inquisition  is  seeking  to  set  up  moral  perse- 
cution, a  Holy  Office  to  hand  over  moral  unorthodoxy  to 
the  secular  arm.  There  are  no  assignable  limits  to  the 
extravagances  of  this.  If  conscientious  and  moderate  use 
of  personal  freedom  is  to  be  made  penal  in  all,  because 
abuse  of  that  freedom  by  some  leads  to  possible  and  indirect 
mischief,  we  must  go  back  to  Moses  and  Aaron,  Lycurgus, 
and  the  Quakers  of  New  England. 

A  zealous  body  of  reformers  trace  our  national  sufferings 
to  the  rapid  increase  of  population.  They  would  like  to 
separate  a  thoro  the  couple  whose  family  exceeded  the 
regulation  number,  and  enforce  absolute  separation  on  a 
second  offence.  The  population  problem  is  quite  as  serious 
as  the  drink  problem.  It  would  be  difficult  to  prove  that 
alcohol  was  the  source  of  more  crime  and  misery  in  the 
world  than  sex.  Sexual  irregularity,  as  such,  might  be 
brought,  as  in  New  England  of  old,  within  the  arm  of  the 
law.     And  if  the  freedom  of  all   is   to   be   stopped  at  its 


THE   VETO   ON   DRINK  191 

source,  to  prevent  the  ulterior  and  possible  licence  of  some, 
it  might  be  made  an  offence  for  a  man  and  a  woman  to 
dance,  walk,  or  talk  together. 

A  zealous  band  of  vegetarians  preach  that  animal  food  is 
practically  poison;  and  there  may  be  an  agitation  to  close 
the  butcher's  shop  as  well  as  the  tavern.  The  national  Meat 
Bill  far  exceeds  the  national  Drink  Bill;  and  many  compe- 
tent authorities  hold  that  more  disease  is  due  to  excess  in 
food  than  to  excess  in  drink.  Many  parents  shamefully 
abuse  their  parental  authority.  Therefore,  it  is  argued, 
allow  no  father  to  punish  a  child.  In  very  truth,  if  we 
once  empower  the  magistrate  to  punish  personal  conduct 
as  well  as  civil  wrong,  there  is  no  limit  to  the  extravagance  of 
tyrannical  fanaticism. 

It  is  certainly  from  no  lukewarmness  as  to  moral  conduct 
that  the  teaching  of  Comte  rejects  the  encroachment  of  law 
on  morality.  It  is  in  the  name  of  morality  and  religion  that 
it  does  so.  Comte  himself  carried  the  rigidity  of  his  personal 
abstinence,  there  is  reason  to  fear,  to  the  point  of  injuring  his 
health.  He  abjured  not  only  all  alcohol  and  tobacco,  but 
even  such  stimulants  as  coffee  and  tea,  reduced  his  sleep  and 
exercise  to  the  lowest  measure,  and  his  daily  food  to  the 
simplest  minimum  that  could  sustain  life.  He  looked  for- 
ward to  a  time  when  most  women  and  preachers  would,  as  a 
rule,  renounce  alcohol  for  themselves.  But  he  has  said 
much  more  about  moderation  in  food,  both  in  quality  and 
costliness,  than  he  has  said  about  abstinence  from  stimulants. 
And  he  has  said  more  about  sexual  control,  even  within  the 
strictest  monogamy,  than  about  temperance  in  food  and 
drink.  He  has  taught  that  man's  appetites,  passions,  and 
selfish  instincts  are  infinitely  complex  and  subtle,  and  that 
it  is  the  entire  organic  nature  and  egoism  in  the  gross  which 
has  to  be  disciplined,  and  not  that  one  single  appetite  is  to 


192  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

be  restrained  by  a  penal  asceticism,  whilst  the  other  appetites 
are  suffered  to  run  riot. 

We  see  daily  how  violent  zealots  for  total  abstinence  are 
gross  feeders ;  and  many  a  rich  reformer  in  alcohol  lives  like 
Lucullus  or  Vitellius,  or  resorts  to  chemical  stimulants. 
Many  of  them  have  abnormally  large  families,  which  they 
sometimes  cruelly  neglect.  Excess  in  dress,  in  luxury,  gam- 
bling, frivolity  and  idleness  in  all  their  forms  are  national 
scourges  and  degrading  habits.  But  it  does  not  follow  that 
we  can  enforce  Vegetarianism  or  Malthusianism  by  imprison- 
ment, or  have  sumptuary  and  ascetic  regulations  for  every 
detail  of  life.  It  was  tried  in  a  nobly  religious  spirit  and 
with  singular  moral  earnestness  by  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  and 
was  a  disastrous  failure.  It  proved  to  be  social  tyranny 
which  tore  up  morality  by  the  roots.  The  basis  of  morality 
is  moral  freedom,  moral  responsibility,  and  conscientious 
conviction.  The  Bishop  was  right,  that  it  is  better  to  be 
free  than  sober.  Moderation  in  enjoyment  of  life  is  a  far 
higher  state  than  any  penal  abstinence.  It  is  better  to 
struggle,  even  feebly,  against  habits  of  self-indulgence,  than 
to  become  a  total  abstainer  by  the  rules  of  the  prison.  The 
very  condition  of  true  temperance  is  to  reject  the  degrading 
temptation  to  appeal  to  force  rather  than  reason,  and  to 
substitute  the  policeman  for  moral  and  spiritual  teaching. 


XV 


CHURCH   DISESTABLISHMENT 

The  measure  introduced  by  Mr.  Asquith  in  1894  for  the 
resettlement  of  the  foundations,  now  monopolised  by  the 
Church  of  England  in  Wales,  was  an  act  of  justice  andpolicy, 
conceived  on  true  lines,  and  worked  out  with  statesmanlike 
foresight.  From  the  point  of  view  of  political  principle,  it 
was  one  of  the  most  important  reforms  ever  submitted  to  the 
legislature ;  for,  though  its  scale  of  operation  was  small  and 
the  changes  it  proposed  were  moderate,  it  embodied  political 
doctrines  which  go  far  and  involve  much.  It  is  not  proposed 
here  to  discuss  its  practical  machinery,  all  the  more  that  the 
House  of  Lords,  with  the  official  spokesmen  of  the  favoured 
creed,  at  once  resolved  to  throw  out  the  Bill  The  result  of 
this  just  and  trenchant  effort  to  get  rid  of  an  ancient  abuse 
will  not  be  so  easily  disposed  of.  But  it  concerns  a  principle 
of  society  and  of  religion  of  the  first  importance. 

Positivists  may  justly  claim  to  be  the  only  religious  society 
which,  both  by  principle  and  practice,  insists  on  the  absolute 
integrity  and  independence  of  the  spiritual  communion. 
Other  Churches  claim  or  cry  out  for  secular  support,  State 
recognition,  public  money,  and  official  intervention,  and  the 
Established  Church  and  the  Catholic  Church  are  the  most 
clamorous  of  all.  The  Church  of  England,  true  to  its  origin 
as  the  creature  of  the  monarchy  and  the  tool  of  the  legisla- 
ture, clings  to  its  legal  monopoly,  without  regard  for  real 
spiritual  interests;  and  it  would  to-day  risk  revolution  and 
public  calamity  so  long  as  it  could  preserve  its  own  privileges. 
o  193 


194  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

The  Church  of  England  has  bred  many  wise  and  saintly 
spirits,  and  it  has  had  some  useful  and  even  beautiful  func- 
tions through  its  lowest  epoch  of  degradation;  but,  looked 
at  historically  and  politically,  it  exhibits  one  of  the  saddest 
spectacles  which  has  ever  dishonoured  Western  Christendom. 
From  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  to-day,  it  has 
resumed  the  work  of  a  true  spiritual  body.  But  from  the 
Revolution  of  1648  until  the  European  Revolution  of  1789, 
it  was  a  mere  liveried  toady  of  the  rich,  the  black  police  of 
the  governing  order;  and  the  long  era  of  the  Trullibers  and 
the  pluralists  has  left  an  indelible  stain  on  the  Establishment 
in  its  official  aspect. 

English  priests  and  congregations  in  our  day,  it  is  quite 
true,  are  exhibiting  individually,  and  for  many  spiritual  ends, 
examples  as  truly  religious  as  those  of  any  existing  body. 
But  a  century  and  a  half  of  the  most  sordid  sycophantism 
and  the  coarsest  self-indulgence  cannot  be  wiped  out  without 
surrender  of  a  class  monopoly,  State  servility,  and  wealth 
more  scandalous  than  that  of  any  extant  Christian  commun- 
ion. Officially,  the  Church  of  England  is  still  the  creature 
of  a  secular  legislature,  the  paid  partisan  of  the  political 
interests  of  the  rich.  Nothing  but  being  relieved  of  its  official 
privileges  and  its  preposterous  wealth  can  ever  enable  it  to 
rise  to  the  level  of  a  pure  and  honest  spiritual  communion. 

The  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland  is,  owing  to  exceptional 
conditions,  in  a  true  and  normal  situation.  But,  even  in 
England,  the  Catholic  Church  is  the  political  and  social  ally  of 
the  rich;  and  its  traditional  policy  of  seeking  everywhere  a 
State  monopoly  is  so  inveterate  that,  even  here,  it  supports  the 
principle  of  an  established  Church.  The  Nonconformists  are 
naturally  jealous  of  a  State  Church,  and  bitterly  resent  the 
privileges  and  endowments  reserved  for  a  single  sect  which 
neither  by  its  numbers  nor  its  works  has  any  claim  to  predomi- 


CHURCH    DISESTABLISHMENT  1 95 

nate.  But  any  of  the  Nonconformists  would  gladly  accept 
State  recognition,  public  money,  Acts  of  Parliament,  seats  in 
the  legislature,  official  honours  and  national  endowments  — 
if  they  saw  any  chance  of  getting  them. 

The  religious  principles  of  Positivism  forbid  it  to  touch 
any  of  these  things,  even  if  it  were  offered  them;  and  it 
may  thus  claim  to  have  a  far  higher  standard  of  spirit- 
ual independence  than  Churchmen,  Catholics,  or  Noncon- 
formists. All  of  these  no  doubt  would  prefer  to  have  public 
endowments,  national  privileges,  and  legislative  protection 
without  incurring  any  obligation  of  lay  control,  parliamentary 
interference,  or  State  direction.  If  they  could,  they  w7ould 
all  —  from  Cardinals  to  Shakers  —  take  money,  dignities, 
or  charters  whilst  remaining  perfectly  free  to  manage  their 
own  affairs  alone.  But  failing  this  impossible  condition, 
they  would  take  anything  they  could  get  at  the  price  of 
surrendering  more  or  less  of  their  liberty.  Sensible  people 
must  see  that  secular  endowment  means  lay  control;  State 
recognition  means  State  authority,  and  charters  and  statutes 
mean  the  orders  of  politicians.  Politicians  do  not  give  these 
things  or  incur  these  cares  without  a  quid  pro  quo.  The  only 
quid  pro  quo  that  Churches  can  give  politicians  is  the  using 
their  pulpits  or  their  confessionals  to  influence  votes.  The 
very  essence  then  of  State  Churches  and  National  Endow- 
ments is  the  corrupt  bargain  by  the  spiritual  communion 
to  do  for  gain  the  very  thing  which  spiritual  communions 
exist  to  prevent.  And  yet  all  Episcopal  Churches  and  almost 
all  Nonconformist  sects  are  ready  to  barter  their  religious 
independence  for  a  mess  of  pottage. 

The  only  honest  and  pure  position  for  any  religious  asso- 
ciation is  to  keep  itself  rigidly  free  from  any  secular  control 
or  duty.  The  normal  relation  of  the  Church  and  the  State 
is  that   of  the   Christian   community  in  the  third   century 


I96  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

before  it  sold  itself  for  endowments  and  establishment  to 
Constantine  and  his  successors.  "Render  unto  Caesar  the 
things  that  are  Caesars" — should  be  its  unfailing  motto. 
Caesar's  money  and  honours  mean  Caesar's  orders.  To  sup- 
pose that  the  Church  is  to  be  loaded  with  dignities,  privileges, 
and  wealth,  and  yet  remain  its  own  spiritual  master,  is  a 
hallucination  that  can  only  delude  some  raw  curate,  fresh 
from  his  Great-Go  and  Boat-club.  For  a  century  or  two 
to  come  at  least,  the  idea  of  England  being  united  in  one 
religious  community  is  a  childish  dream.  And  whilst  there 
are  several  Christian  communities  in  a  democratic  country, 
it  is  an  incessant  source  of  strife  to  give  privileges  to  any  one. 
If  all  are  endowed  alike,  at  so  much  per  head,  politicians 
must  exercise  the  ultimate  control  over  the  religious  bodies 
which  take  their  pay.  A  really  religious  body  should  not 
be  conterminous  with  the  State  or  in  any  way  identified  with 
or  controlled  by  the  State.  The  very  term  Church  of  Eng- 
land is  a  badge  of  degradation.  A  national  Church  is  the 
type  of  an  unspiritual,  narrow,  local,  and  Erastian  Church. 
If  a  Church  has  no  wider  spiritual  interests  than  the  Civil 
government,  unless  it  stands  outside  and  above  civil  govern- 
ment, it  does  not  deserve  the  name  of  Church  at  all. 

We  need  not  waste  time  over  the  preposterous  pretence 
that  we  are  bound  to  retain  the  disposition  of  property  made 
by  those  who  are  long  since  dead.  If  they  wished  to  secure 
their  possessions  absolutely  to  themselves  they  should  have 
carried  these  possessions  with  them  to  their  own  place.  But 
as  they  have  left  their  lands  and  their  buildings,  their  income 
and  goods,  to  be  tilled  by  the  living,  to  be  guarded,  repaired, 
collected,  and  administered  by  the  present  generation,  the 
present  generation  have  an  unlimited  authority  to  dispose 
of  them  in  any  way  they  think  fit.  It  would  be  as  silly  to 
suppose  that  men  are  all  bound  to  be  circumcised  and  abstain 


CHURCH    DISESTABLISHMENT  1 97 

from  pork,  because  Moses  so  directed  them  three  thousand 
years  ago ;  or  because  our  Cathedrals  were  built  by  Catholics, 
that  we  are  bound  to  continue  to  devote  them  to  the  mass. 
At  the  Reformation  the  Church  of  England  by  Act  of  Par- 
liament obtained  the  root  and  branch  disestablishment  and 
disendowment  of  the  entire  Catholic  foundations,  turned  out 
all  the  orders  and  gave  their  property  to  lay  speculators,  and 
diverted  from  its  destination  every  stone  and  every  acre  on 
which  it  could  lay  its  hand.  After  this  act  of  spoliation  — 
one  of  the  most  violent  and  pitiless  recorded  in  modern  his- 
tory —  it  is  ridiculous  for  the  same  Church,  the  mere  creature 
and  servant  of  the  State,  to  talk  about  sacrilege  and  rob- 
bery when  modern  statesmen  propose  to  subject  it  to  a 
very  moderate  and  extremely  considerate  application  of  the 
legal  doctrine  of  cy-pres. 

The  scheme  proposed  by  the  Liberal  Government  of  1894 
for  the  modification  of  the  Church  of  England  in  a  part  of 
this  island  was  a  moderate  and  yet  an  honest  proposal.  We 
leave  it  to  antiquated  pedants  to  talk  about  the  inalienable 
rights  of  the  Church.  There  never  was  a  religious  commu- 
nity which  had  less  of  a  sacred  and  immemorial  character. 
It  is  a  mere  government  bureau  wrhich  voluntarily  accepts  to 
have  its  creed,  its  ritual,  its  discipline,  its  entire  priesthood 
and  prelacy,  determined  for  it  by  laymen  who  are  not  at  all 
necessarily  Churchmen  or  even  Christians.  John  Morley 
may  yet  have  to  appoint  an  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and 
the  late  Lord  Aylesbury  was  the  "patron"  of  many  "livings." 
We  might  as  well  talk  of  the  "sacred  rights"  of  the  Income 
Tax  or  the  County  Police  as  those  of  the  Church  of  England. 
The  fact  that  it  would  be  convenient  to  commence  the  reform 
in  certain  western  counties  and  parishes,  is  a  practical  detail 
on  which  nothing  turns.  There  is  no  Church  of  Wales,  no 
such  corporation  known  to  the  law  as  Church  of  England. 


198  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

The  Church  is  a  mere  agglomerate  of  corporate  bodies  every 
one  of  which  is  under  lay  control,  with  a  supreme  head  in  a 
lay  sovereign,  and  ordered  from  session  to  session  by  a 
Parliament  in  which  Catholics  and  Dissenters  alternately 
hold  the  balance.  If  convenient,  disestablishment  might 
begin  in  every  town  with  more  than  50,000  inhabitants. 
Ultimately,  of  course,  it  must  extend  to  the  whole  of  the  three 
kingdoms. 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  Positivists,  much  less  the 
present  writer,  feel  any  animosity  to  the  Church  of  England 
as  a  spiritual  body,  apart  from  its  monopoly  of  privilege  and 
wealth.  On  the  contrary,  we  feel  that  it  is  capable  of  higher 
religious  functions  than  any  other  Protestant  body;  and  the 
present  writer  at  any  rate  has  a  deep  esteem  for  many  of 
its  best  workers  and  sympathy  with  its  intellectual,  spiritual, 
and  artistic  traditions.  As  men  who  hold  that  the  most 
urgent  need  of  the  time  is  the  formation  of  a  spiritual  author- 
ity, we  are  certainly  aware  of  the  religious  capabilities  which 
abound  in  the  Church  of  England.  The  rise  of  a  living 
social  Church  is,  we  know,  the  first  condition  of  a  purer  life. 
And  we  recognise  the  living  elements  of  a  Church  in  the 
communion  of  Hooker  and  Ken,  Wesley  and  Keble.  But 
they  are  choked  and  poisoned  by  the  tares  of  official  prelacy, 
legal  monopoly,  and  scandalous  endowments.  Apart  from 
its  simoniacal  constitution  and  its  unholy  alliance  with  the 
richer  orders  of  laymen,  the  Church,  as  a  purely  spiritual 
and  free  society  of  Christian  believers,  might  do  good  social 
work  and  raise  the  tone  of  civilisation.  As  a  mere  ecclesias- 
tical Primrose  League  it  must  remain  an  enemy  of  social 
progress  and  a  scandal  to  true  religion,  until  it  can  renounce 
State  support  and  national  property  as  completely  as  does 
the  Catholic  Church  in  Ireland. 


XVI 

THE   RECOGNITION    OF   ANGLICAN   ORDERS 

The  public  press  has  been  much  occupied  of  late  with  the 
relations  of  the  Catholic  and  the  Anglican  Churches  and 
with  the  policy  of  recent  Popes  in  that  matter;  many  Eng- 
lish Churchmen  and  English  Catholics  have  been  greatly 
stirred  by  the  movement,  into  which  a  venerable  statesman 
flung  himself  with  his  wonted  ardour  and  eloquence.  Those 
who  have  only  a  superficial  knowledge  of  Positivists  might 
possibly  suppose  that  the  whole  question  is  one  without  the 
remotest  interest  for  them;  that  the  validity  of  Anglican 
orders,  the  historical  continuity  of  the  Churches,  the  views  of 
Leo  XIII. ,  Pio  X.,  Mr.  Gladstone,  could  only  awaken  in 
them  a  mild  sense  of  amused  bewilderment,  and  a  wonder 
that  responsible  rulers  of  great  communities  should  occupy 
their  time  with  such  pedantic  formalism. 

This  idea  would  imply  a  radical  misconception.  The 
question  between  the  various  Christian  Churches  is  one  in 
which  we  can  take  a  serious  interest,  and  which  we  by  no 
means  approach  in  a  spirit  of  ignorance  or  contempt.  We  are 
not,  and  I  suppose  none  of  us  ever  have  been,  Atheists  or 
Materialists  in  the  proper  sense  of  those  terms:  we  do  not 
accept  the  name  of  Agnostics  or  Sceptics,  Free-Thinkers  or 
Unbelievers.  We  hold  a  Positive  Faith,  with  a  systematic 
creed  and  a  coherent  body  of  doctrine;  by  that  only  do  we 
desire  to  be  known  and  described.  We  believe  in  the  para- 
mount importance  of  an  organised  spiritual  communion ;  we 
hold  by  the  ancient  things  and  familiar  names  of  Religion, 

199 


200  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Church,  Worship,  and  Priesthood.  The  development,  fusion, 
and  schism  of  Churches  are  therefore  to  us  very  dominant 
factors  in  any  type  of  social  organisation. 

And,  certainly,  none  the  less  that  they  are  Christian 
Churches,  and  that  the  point  at  issue  turns  on  the  position 
of  the  Papal  communion  and  claims.  It  is  obvious  that  the 
rise  and  development  of  the  Catholic  Church  is,  in  the  Posi- 
tivist  synthesis,  far  the  most  important  phenomenon  in  the 
whole  evolution  of  religion,  whilst  in  the  Positivist  scheme  of 
universal  history,  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  Roman  type 
of  Christianity  occupy  a  place  of  interest  that  no  other 
movement  in  history  surpasses.  Every  word  that  has  been 
written  by  Comte,  every  publication  of  our  body,  goes  to  the 
same  effect,  as  any  one  might  observe  if  he  glanced  at  the 
lives  of  the  Catholic  worthies  in  our  "New  Calendar  of 
Great  Men,"  where  they  occupy  about  one-fifth  of  the  whole. 
Nor  do  we  speak  in  complete  ignorance  of  the  Churches  as 
seen  from  the  inside.  Comte  himself  was  brought  up  as  a 
Catholic  by  zealous  Catholic  parents.  It  so  happens  that 
in  England  most  of  us  came  out  of  orthodox  Christian 
families,  some  of  us  from  families  in  the  priesthood.  And 
most  of  us  were  sincere  communicants  in  Anglican  or  Protes- 
tant communions  until  well  into  mature  life.  We  have  none 
of  us  ceased  to  be  in  close  relation  and  in  active  sympathy 
with  devout  Christian  men  and  women,  and,  indeed,  with 
some  who  hold  responsible  office  in  one  or  other  of  the 
Churches. 

Now,  to  us  who  study  the  history  of  the  Catholic  Church 
as  a  crucial  problem  in  social  dynamics,  what  strikes  us  as 
so  unaccountable  is  the  expectation  in  the  minds  of  men  like 
Mr.  Gladstone  and  Lord  Halifax  that  something  new  was 
likely  to  arise  in  the  way  of  conciliation  between  the  Roman 
and  Anglican  communions  out  of  the  friendly  courtesies  of 


THE    RECOGNITION    OF    ANGLICAN    ORDERS  201 

the  ruling  Pontiff.  Leo  XIII.  was  apparently  one  of  the 
most  sagacious  and  fatherly  spirits  who  in  these  ages  have 
occupied  the  Holy  See.  But  that  anything  like  a  com- 
promise —  a  case  of  give-and-take  —  do  nt  des  —  was  about 
to  issue  from  his  sagacity  or  his  benevolence,  does  strike 
us,  as  impartial  students  of  Latin  Christianity  from  the  first 
Leo  to  the  thirteenth,  as  a  strange  hallucination.  To  sup- 
pose that  Rome  was  about  to  move  one  step  towards  Canter- 
bury, to  surrender  that  which  has  been  its  chief  winning 
claim  for  fourteen  centuries,  to  hand  over  the  keys  of  St. 
Peter  to  heretics  for  an  hour  —  was  as  idle  as  to  ask  for 
the  Vatican  to  be  transported  en  bloc  to  London.  Without 
pretending  to  know  what  exactly  was  in  the  large  mind  of 
his  amiable  Holiness,  as  cool  observers  of  ecclesiastical 
strategy,  we  know  that  there  is  one  thing  which  neither  Leo 
XIII.,  nor  any  Leo  XXXIII. ,  will  ever  accept,  and  that  is, 
the  sharing  in  joint  occupancy  the  heavenly  gifts  of  St.  Peter 
with  local  schismatics. 

To  admit  the  validity  of  Anglican  orders  is  to  accept  the 
concurrent  possession  by  heretics  of  the  exclusive  mystery 
solely  entrusted  to  Peter.  Upon  this  mystical  consecration 
the  whole  prerogative  claim  of  the  See  of  Rome  is  based. 
To  abandon  it  is  to  admit  that  the  Rock  of  Peter  has  no  greater 
virtue  than  any  sand-heap  whereon  any  revolting  body  of 
Christians  may  choose  to  build  a  sacerdotal  sedilc.  It  is 
really  the  central  idea  whereon  rests  the  claim  of  the  See  of 
Rome  to  be  Catholic  and  not  local.  With  all  its  powers  of 
adaptability,  which  do  give  some  meaning  to  its  claims  of 
Catholicity,  the  strength  of  Rome  lies  in  its  immutable  fixity 
in  that  which  it  regards  as  fundamental.  In  the  Maelstrom 
of  ever  revolving  change  or  movement,  wherein  modern 
society  makes  its  primary  boast,  the  See  of  Rome  does  seem 
to  many  minds  the  one  stable  point,  the  only  solid  rock  in 


202  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  surge  of  waters.  And  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  the 
mystical  commission  entrusted  in  the  beginning  of  the  Gos- 
pel to  "the  Chief  of  the  Apostles"  is  —  if  anything  else  be 
so  —  a  real  "fundamental." 

Of  course,  we  quite  agree  with  all  enlightened  and  learned 
Protestants  that  the  play  of  words  about  Peter  and  the  Rock 
is  an  antique  quibble,  without  a  shred  of  historical  authority. 
Apostolical  Succession,  Transmission  of  Grace,  and  mystical 
foundation  of  the  Holy  See  are  merely  phrases  in  which  the 
superstition  of  ages  has  wrapped  up  a  vast  organisation  aim- 
ing at  the  moral  cultivation  of  men  —  one  which  for  a  certain 
time  succeeded,  and  still,  in  a  degree,  succeeds  in  its  task. 
We  are  quite  ready  to  allow  the  Catholic  Church  full  credit 
for  any  useful  social  purposes  it  fulfils,  without  making  too 
much  of  the  obsolete  figments  on  which  it  professes  to  rest 
its  authority,  just  as  we  can  accept  the  British  Monarchy 
as  a  part  of  the  Constitution,  though  we  reject  the  antique 
fiction  that  the  Crown  has  a  divine  right.  But  when  we  are 
confronted  with  the  rival  claims  of  the  Catholic  and  Anglican 
orders,  it  does  seem  incomprehensible  that  serious  and  devout 
Anglicans  can  be  found  to  stickle  for  such  double-distilled 
transcendentalism.  The  divine  commission  of  Peter  and 
his  successors  is  at  any  rate  lost  in  the  mist  of  antiquity  and 
has  received  the  allegiance  of  eighteen  centuries.  The 
divine  commission  of  Parker  and  his  successors  is  quite  recent 
and  prosaic  —  well  within  the  bounds  of  historic  verifica- 
tion. To  us  it  sounds  like  the  burlesque  imitation  of  a 
miracle-play. 

This  brings  us  back  for  the  hundredth  time  to  wonder  at 
the  trifling  gain  to  intellectual  consistency  for  which  Angli- 
canism sacrifices  so  much  that  is  the  strength  of  Rome. 
The  sacramental  theory  it  teaches  is  not  a  whit  more  scientific 
than  the  Sacrifice  of  the  Mass,  and  loses  much  in  spiritual 


THE    RECOGNITION   OF    ANGLICAN   ORDERS  203 

efficacy.  The  Thirty-nine  Articles  do  not  seem  to  us  more 
rational,  nor  even  more  intelligible,  than  the  Papal  Syllabus. 
Whether  there  be  seven  sacraments,  or  only  two,  is  in  itself 
a  dispute  about  words.  If  a  sacrament  is  a  ceremonial 
commemorative  of  true  Christian  communion,  then  two 
sacraments  are  too  few;  and  if  a  sacrament  is  a  mystical 
infusion  of  supernatural  grace,  then  they  are  too  many. 
To  take  a  vast  body  of  transcendental  hypotheses,  resting 
on  a  vague  mass  of  unverifiable  traditions  and  inscrutable 
writings,  having  a  huge  accretion  of  custom  and  ceremonial 
that  has  grown  up  during  eighteen  centuries,  and  commands 
sympathy  from  hundreds  of  millions  in  all  parts  of  the  world 
—  to  pare  off  a  hypothesis  here  and  there,  to  pick  and  choose 
in  the  inscrutable  writings,  to  turn  poetry  into  prose,  and 
drama  into  narrative,  to  convert  the  gorgeous  old  litanies  and 
ceremonies  into  dull  and  arid  forms  that  have  no  more  sci- 
entific reality  than  the  old,  this  does  seem  a  needless  parade 
of  hypocritical  reformation. 

To  those  who  study  the  conditions  and  relations  of  Religion 
as  seen  in  the  whole  course  of  human  civilisation  over  the 
Planet,  all  forms  of  Theology  are  without  verification  or 
demonstration,  i.e.  are  mere  hypotheses,  figments,  or  crea- 
tions of  the  human  mind.  The  varieties  in  these  hypotheses 
and  figments  are  of  quite  minor  importance  in  logic,  and  are 
for  the  most  part  utterly  trivial.  That  certain  theological 
hypotheses  are  of  far  greater  moral  and  social  efficacy  than 
are  others  is  indeed  most  true;  and  this  determines  the  social 
usefulness  of  any  type  of  religion.  We  quite  agree  that  some 
theologies  have  a  beautiful  power  over  the  human  soul,  and 
have  grandly  conduced  to  human  civilisation;  whilst  others 
have  been  cruel,  base,  or  deadening.  The  hypotheses  of 
the  Incarnation  and  the  Immaculate  Conception  have 
certainly  had  powerful  moral  reactions  on  men  and  on  na- 


204  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

tions;  whilst  the  hypotheses  of  Moloch  and  Jaggernauth 
have  had  an  evil  reaction  on  the  whole.  But  logically  speak- 
ing, unverified  and  unverifiable  hypotheses  stand  on  much  the 
same  ground  of  intellectual  hollowness.  The  ground  may 
give  way  under  them  at  any  moment,  so  soon  as  scientific 
habits  of  thought  begin  to  prevail.  To  pare  away  half-a- 
dozen  corollary  hypotheses  from  a  vast  hypothetical  super- 
structure and  leave  the  rest  standing,  whilst  supplying  no 
new  support  to  the  ground  on  which  the  whole  is  based,  does 
nothing  to  make  the  edifice  secure.  The  whole  thing  may 
come  down  with  a  crash  by  its  own  weight. 

What  to  us  seems  so  strange  in  the  Anglican  schism  is 
that,  without  gaining  any  real  advance  in  intellectual  con- 
sistency, and  leaving  the  creed  quite  as  hypothetical  as  a 
whole,  the  English  Church  practically  surrenders  what  gives 
the  Roman  Church  its  show  of  stability,  and  its  moral  power 
of  discipline.  A  Church  which  has  its  foundations,  not  in 
the  mystical  words  of  Christ  amongst  his  apostles,  but  in 
the  passions  and  whims  of  Tudor  sovereigns,  which  makes 
its  ritual  a  cold  and  half-hearted  imitation  of  old-world 
ceremonials,  which  abandons  the  very  pretence  of  discipline 
and  converts  its  hierarchy  into  a  mere  aristocratic  Trade- 
Guild,  has  ceased  to  be  what  from  a  broad  view  of  human 
history,  we  ought  to  call  a  Church,  and,  as  an  institution,  it 
is  a  mere  historic  survival,  like  the  Corporation  of  London, 
or  the  Inns  of  Court.  Certainly,  there  are  in  its  ranks  many 
men  of  great  learning,  piety,  and  goodness,  and  it  represents 
continually  the  gathering  together  of  some  beautiful  spirits. 
But  much  more  than  this  is  required  to  make  a  Church  in 
the  historic  and  social  sense,  as  a  dominant  and  organised 
Spiritual  Power,  at  least  co-equal  with  the  Temporal  Power. 
This  Anglicanism  never  was,  or  pretended  to  be.  For  such 
a  historic  survival  to  busy  itself  about  the  Apostolical  Sue- 


THE    RECOGNITION    OF    ANGLICAN    ORDERS  205 

cession  of  its  Orders,  is  really  a  claim  quite  as  purely  anti- 
quarian and  as  practically  preposterous,  as  if  the  Right 
Honourable  the  Lord  Mayor  were  to  insist  on  being  sum- 
moned to  the  Cabinet  Councils. 

It  is  wonderful  that  a  statesman  of  the  vast  experience  of 
Mr.  Gladstone  should  be  willing  to  run  all  the  risks  which 
any  rapprochement  between  Rome  and  Canterbury  would 
involve.  Anglicanism,  under  the  suspicion  of  Romanising, 
would  lose  much  more  than  it  would  gain  by  any  advance 
in  its  Ecclesiasticism.  Those  who  care  about  the  technical 
title-deeds  of  Churches,  who  deeply  value  the  personal  and 
social  power  of  a  Church,  and  who  set  Christianity  far  above 
logic,  reason,  proof,  and  science  —  all  such  will  ultimately 
join  Rome,  which  is  the  historic,  natural,  organic  form  of  a 
Christian  Church.  Those  who  think  more  of  the  real 
efficiency  of  a  religious  community  than  of  its  legal  techni- 
calities, or  those  who  think  any  Church  a  mischievous  and 
obsolete  interference  with  the  human  conscience,  as  well  as 
those  who  refuse  to  let  any  kind  of  religion,  in  the  name  of 
Moses,  Christ,  Peter,  or  Mahomet,  pretend  to  be  more  true 
than  science,  more  sacred  than  Humanity,  more  certain  than 
demonstration  —  such  will  not  join  Rome.  And,  a  fortiori, 
they  will  not  join  Canterbury  —  whether  the  Pope  "recog- 
nises its  Orders,"  or,  remarking  with  a  sigh  "Ego  sum 
Petrus"  simply  says  Non  possumus. 


XVII 

THE    CRISIS    IN   THE    CHURCH 

(1899) 

Since  the  Church  of  England  claims  to  be  a  national  Church, 
established  by  law  and  regulated  by  Act  of  Parliament, 
endowed  with  political  privileges  and  vast  national  posses- 
sions, its  condition  and  future  concern  Agnostics  as  well  as 
all  other  citizens;  and  they  have  every  right  to  take  part 
in  the  political  agitation  which  it  has  chosen  to  create. 
Again,  as  having  very  deep  interest  in  the  restoration  of  re- 
ligion and  spiritual  union,  with  no  prejudice  against  any 
sincere  religious  movement,  Positivists  are  especially  able  to 
take  a  thorough  and  impartial  view  of  this  very  interesting 
crisis  in  the  Christian  world.  They  have  much  sympathy 
with  both  those  permanent  religious  sentiments  which  are 
now  face  to  face,  struggling  for  mastery  — ■  the  desire  to 
make  congregational  worship  both  beautiful  and  imposing  — 
the  resolve  to  maintain  personal  devotion  in  moral  purity, 
truth,  and  manliness. 

If  this  religious  crisis  were  now  passing  in  the  Catholic 
Church,  in  the  Jewish  synagogues,  in  any  of  the  Protestant 
communions,  it  would  not  concern  us  to  intervene,  nor  should 
we  feel  any  interest  in  so  doing.  But  the  position  of  the 
Church  of  England  is  quite  different.  Its  boast  and  glory  is 
to  represent  the  nation  and  to  be  bound  up  with  a  complex 
set  of  political  functions,  institutions,  and  privileges.     A  lay 

206 


THE    CRISIS    IN   THE    CHURCH  207 

Prime  Minister,  who  may  be  a  Jew  or  an  Atheist,  appoints 
the  prelates;  he  could  carry  measures  completely  refash- 
ioning the  system  of  worship,  discipline,  or  doctrine.  Any 
such  measures  would  be  enacted  by  the  votes  of  Catholics, 
Nonconformists,  Jews,  and  Agnostics,  who  might  be  a  large 
majority  in  Parliament.  Any  lay  parishioner  of  exemplary 
life  and  conduct,  who  has  been  baptized,  and  has  duly  per- 
formed all  legal  obligations  in  his  parish,  can  enforce  his 
rights  to  the  ministrations  of  the  national  church,  whatever 
his  personal  opinions;  and,  though  he  publicly  deny  every- 
one of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  his  parish  priest  cannot 
examine  or  punish  him,  nor  can  he  deny  him  the  offices  or 
exclude  him  from  his  place  in  church.  All  this  is  the  pride 
of  the  Church  as  a  body,  the  sole  justification  for  its  political 
prerogatives,  and  the  ground  of  its  claim  to  be  comprehen- 
sive, tolerant,  and  truly  Catholic. 

Individual  Churchmen  deeply  resent  this  slavery;  and 
some  priests  are  foolish  enough  to  think  it  possible  to  retain 
establishment,  endowments,  and  prerogatives,  and  yet  have 
that  absolute  freedom  from  all  State  or  lay  control  which 
the  Catholic  priesthood  naturally  enjoys.  That  of  course  is 
absurd.  They  cannot  have  it  both  ways :  —  Establishment 
with  all  its  wealth  and  seats  of  the  mighty,  its  prestige  and 
its  political  powers;  and  yet  an  Establishment  sublimely 
defiant  of  the  State  or  of  any  lay  control.  Every  Christian 
communion  in  these  islands  —  except  one  —  is  free.  The 
Church  of  England  has  sold  its  freedom  for  wealth  and 
power.  It  can  recover  its  freedom  and  become  a  spiritual 
body  again.  But  it  cannot  go  forth  to  begin  a  higher  life 
until  it  has  left  behind  the  magnificent  temples,  estates,  and 
monuments  which  the  Tudors  tore  away  from  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  until  it  has  disgorged  all  the  lordly  and  splen- 
did prerogatives  it  has  appropriated  in  its  days  of   Erastian 


208  REALITIES    AND    LDEALS 

subserviency,  as  the  parasite  of  the  ruling  class  and  the 
agent  of  class  oppression. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  English  Positivists  are  Pagans  and 
Gentiles,  without  sympathy  or  understanding  in  the  prob- 
lems of  Anglican  Churchmen.  The  Church  of  Humanity 
in  England  is  indeed  one  of  the  off-shoots  and  free  com- 
munions which  the  expansive  and  elastic  spirit  of  Anglican- 
ism has  nurtured  and  bred.  The  Positivist  movement  in 
England  was  founded  by  an  Anglican  priest,  and  has  been 
developed  by  his  pupils  and  friends  from  Anglican  colleges, 
schools,  and  Church  institutions.  Some  of  the  most  active 
writers  and  lecturers  in  the  Service  of  Man  were  bred  up 
in  rectories  and  high-church  homes  and  were  trained  for  the 
Christian  ministry.  Many  of  us  have  been  devout  Church- 
men until  manhood,  honest  communicants,  and  sincere 
believers;  and  many  of  us  still  share  in  Christian  worship 
from  time  to  time  without  repugnance  or  contempt,  and  are 
closely  connected  with  earnest  Churchmen,  both  clerical 
and  lay.  The  sympathy  with  Catholic  rituals  and  sacer- 
dotalism which  ignorant  Agnostics  impute  to  Positivists  is  a 
remnant  of  our  early  religious  training,  so  far  as  any  such 
sympathy  exists  at  all.  As  men  who  from  childhood  have 
been  deeply  imbued  with  traditions  and  sentiments  of  the 
Church,  yet  who  in  mature  life  gradually  evolved  a  religious 
hope  which  even  the  Church  Catholic  is  not  broad  enough 
to  satisfy,  Positivists  are  peculiarly  apt  to  view  the  Anglican 
problem  with  sympathetic  and  impartial  eyes. 

What  is  commonly  called  Ritualism  is  a  very  small  matter ; 
and  it  ought  not  to  cause  any  serious  problem  in  the  Church. 
If  that  were  all,  the  demand  of  the  Bishops  and  sensible 
Churchmen  to  give  them  time  to  restore  discipline  and  to 
leave  the  question  to  paternal  counsel  and  episcopal  tact, 
would  be  eminently  wise  and  practical.     It  would  serve  to 


THE    CRISIS    IN   THE    CHURCH  209 

restore  order  as  it  has  so  often  served  before.  The  Church 
of  England  is  a  big  thing  in  any  case,  and  quiet  men  of  the 
world  naturally  decline  to  pull  it  to  pieces  for  a  squabble 
about  trivial  matters  of  form  —  such  as  incense,  candles, 
asperging,  vestments,  and  genuflexions.  Sour  Puritans  may 
be  scandalised,  but  that  is  because  their  ideas  of  religion 
are  narrow  and  hide-bound.  Those  who  look  for  a  Human 
Religion  are  only  too  glad  to  see  Christians  seeking  a  more 
beautiful  and  historic  form  of  cult,  and  reviving  some  of  the 
venerable  rites  of  artistic  Polytheism  and  of  Eastern  mysti- 
cism. There  is  nothing  Christian  about  incense,  holy  water, 
processions  of  priests,  prostrations,  turning  to  the  Eastern 
Sun,  anointing,  purification,  and  sacramental  oblations 
and  libations.  All  these  things  were  borrowed  by  Catholics 
from  Polytheistic  and  Theocratic  rituals.  And  Positivists 
can  only  rejoice  to  see  these  immemorial  habits  of  human 
religion  borrowed  again  from  Catholics  by  Anglican  priests 
and  Churchmen. 

But  the  revival  of  antique  and  graceful  rites,  which  have 
never  been  quite  extinct  in  the  English  Church,  is  not  all. 
There  is  a  far  broader  problem  —  one  which  sixty  years  ago 
shook  the  Church  to  its  foundations,  but  which  is  to-day  a 
far  deeper  and  more  organised  movement.  That  is  the  in- 
tense craving  of  an  influential  body  of  Anglicans,  lay  as  well 
as  clerical,  for  reunion  with  the  Catholic  Church.  That 
deep  longing  to  "go  home,"  as  so  many  devout  men  and 
women  call  it,  has  never  been  quite  suppressed  in  the  English 
Church;  and  in  an  age  of  intellectual  and  sentimental 
reaction  like  the  present  it  is  stronger  and  wider  than  it  has 
ever  been,  perhaps  since  the  time  of  Laud.  What  was  a 
sporadic  sentiment  in  the  days  of  Newman  and  Manning 
is  now  an  organised  and  reasoned  movement.  It  is  perhaps 
difficult  to  estimate  its  strength  in  the  way  of  numbers.     It 


2IO  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

must  count  its  priests  by  four  figures  and  its  laymen  by  five 
figures,  to  say  the  least.  But  figures  go  for  little  in  such 
things.  Spiritual  things  are  ruled  by  influence,  and  by 
commanding  natures.  And  if  there  were  but  a  score  of 
such  in  the  movement,  it  ought  to  bring  sleepless  nights  to 
the  Bishops  and  to  the  Ministers  who  make  and  control 
the  Bishops. 

Of  course,  Positivists  will  not  be  disturbed  if  a  wholesale 
"conversion"  to  Rome  take  place  in  the  Anglican  Church. 
We  look  on  it  not  only  as  natural,  but  as  inevitable.  We 
have  long  been  accustomed  to  treat  the  Church  Catholic 
as  the  only  essential  form  of  Christianity,  and  Protestantism 
as  an  illogical  and  temporary  make-shift.  But  collective 
reunion  with  Rome,  as  recent  events  have  proved,  is  not  at 
all  a  simple  matter.  Men  and  women,  priests  and  laymen, 
may  "go  over"  separately  in  any  numbers.  But  when  it 
comes  to  any  kind  of  amalgamation  of  corporate  bodies,  the 
trouble  begins.  Rome  will  not  yield  an  inch  —  of  course 
not.  It  would  not  be  Rome  if  it  did.  As  to  orders,  discipline, 
dogma,  ritual  —  it  is  absolute  submission  to  Peter,  or  noth- 
ing. This  is  very  grievous  even  to  the  most  Catholic-minded 
Anglican  priest.  Laymen,  of  romantic  loyalty  to  our  gracious 
Sovereign,  feel  the  old  Protestant  qualm  about  the  Pope  of 
Rome  in  these  realms.  Lord  Halifax  and  his  lay  friends 
and  many  young  curates  may  desire  reunion.  But  there  is 
one  cruel  difficulty  still.  The  great  majority  of  Anglican 
priests  have  wives,  or  hope  to  have  wives.  In  joining  the 
Catholic  Church  they  give  up  their  orders  and  all  hope  of  a 
priestly  career.  They  sink  into  the  lay  crowd.  For  them  it 
is  written  over  the  portal  of  Rome  —  Lasciate  ogni  speranza, 
voi,  ch?  entrate.  They  long  to  be  Catholic;  but  can  they 
renounce  the  priesthood  to  which  their  whole  lives  are 
dedicated? 


THE    CRISIS    IN   THE    CHURCH  211 

There  is  also  another  dilemma.  We  hear  a  great  deal 
about  "lawlessness  in  the  Church,"  and  we  shall  hear  much 
more.  Now  this  "lawlessness"  is  not  a  mere  Romanising 
tendency.  It  is  an  ingrained  temper  of  anarchy,  self-will, 
and  self-conceit  which  the  chaotic  state  of  the  Establishment 
in  the  last  fifty  years  has  bred  in  the  priesthood.  For  sheer, 
obstinate,  arrogant  individualism  it  would  be  difficult  to 
match  a  high  ritualist,  at  least  within  any  ministerial  func- 
tion. For  all  their  passionate  ritualism,  these  men  are  per- 
sonally as  stiff-necked  and  as  opinionated  as  a  Free  Kirk 
elder.  There  are  dozens  of  distinct  "Unions"  and  "Asso- 
ciations," scattering  the  seeds  of  disunion:  all  differing  from 
each  other  on  matters  great  and  small;  and  each  bent  on 
going  its  own  way  to  the  end.  The  temper,  traditions,  and 
instincts  of  the  true  Catholic  priesthood  differ  from  those  of 
the  "revolting  parsons,"  as  completely  as  the  discipline  of  a 
Prussian  guardsman  differs  from  that  of  a  British  volunteer. 
Lawlessness,  loose  discipline,  and  individualism  are  bred 
in  the  law  and  traditions  of  Anglicanism.  The  Romanisers 
all  want  to  go  to  Rome  by  different  routes,  and  personally 
to  conduct  their  group  of  travellers  when  they  get  there.  If 
the  whole  body  of  the  Anglican  clergy  were  suddenly  to  be 
reconciled  to  the  Pope,  it  may  be  doubted  if  even  the  enor- 
mous forces  at  the  disposal  of  Peter  could  drill  them  into 
the  true  temper  of  Catholic  submission.  Heresies,  revolts, 
and  scandals  would  make  uneasy  the  head  that  wears  the 
Triple  Crown. 

After  all,  the  real  point  is  a  much  more  definite  and  serious 
one.  It  is  this  —  the  sacerdotal  claim :  first,  to  perform  the 
miracle  of  the  "Mass,"  i.e.  to  turn  bread  and  wine  into  God; 
and  secondly,  to  absolve  the  sinner  from  God's  wrath  by 
Confession  and  Absolution  as  part  of  compulsory  discipline 
and  ordinary  communion.     It  is  true  that  these  rites  are 


212  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

understood  by  Churchmen  and  even  amongst  Ritualists, 
with  immensely  varying  shades  of  meaning :  from  that  which 
is  a  gross  objective  miracle  to  that  which  is  a  mere  subjective 
sentiment  —  from  the  horrible  bullying  of  weak  girls  down 
to  the  occasional  outpouring  of  a  burdened  soul.  It  is  quite 
true  also  that  the  official  language  of  the  Establishment,  with 
that  spirit  of  shuffling  in  which  it  was  begotten  and  bred, 
does  admit  of  being  strained  from  one  extreme  to  the  other. 

But  in  the  medley  of  double-entente  which  composes  the 
Anglican  code,  there  is  one  thing  certain,  which  is  this.  The 
English  Church  broke  off  from  the  Church  Catholic  because 
it  denied  that  a  priest  could  or  should  objectively  turn  a  bit 
of  bread  into  Christ,  or  force  penitents  to  have  their  sins 
personally  wiped  out  in  habitual  secret  confession.  Now,  a 
very  determined  and  influential  body  of  Anglican  priests 
are  resolved  to  introduce  both  these  practices  in  their  most 
material  and  imperious  form.  It  signifies  little  that  at 
present  they  are  not  numerous.  Those  whom  they  influ- 
ence, and  those  who  approve  the  rites  and  practices  whereby 
the  central  aims  of  sacerdotalism  are  disguised,  are  very 
numerous.  The  extreme  Romanisers  are  secret,  uncandid, 
and  unscrupulous.  And  all  the  devices  of  incense,  asperges, 
antiphones,  copes,  reservation  for  the  sick,  and  weak  con- 
sciences, are  merely  the  trappings  and  excuses  of  the  great 
sacerdotal  miracle,  or  of  the  coveted  sacerdotal  power  to  give 
the  sinner  a  free  conscience  and  light  heart. 

There  lies  the  gravity  of  the  crisis.  In  the  days  of  New- 
man some  earnest  Churchmen  sought  rest  for  their  troubled 
intellects  in  Rome.  Now  an  organised  but  secret  body  of 
Anglican  priests  are  bent  on  taking  over  to  Rome  whole 
sections  of  their  Church,  and  at  least  large  congregations  en 
bloc.  Short  of  this,  they  are  bent  on  practising  within  the 
Church  those  sacerdotal  acts  of  a  supernatural  commission 


THE    CRISIS    IN   THE    CHURCH  213 

which  the  Reformed  Church  was  founded  to  stop.  Will 
this  succeed?  At  present  these  extreme  men  are  a  small 
minority;  but  they  are  resolute  and  know  their  own  minds. 
Few  as  they  are,  they  have  around  them  a  large  body  of 
Ritualists,  clerical  and  lay,  who  are  not  at  all  prepared  to 
go  to  the  end,  but  who  fervently  cling  to  the  trivial  externals 
wherein  the  miracles  are  draped.  These  mere  "Ritualists," 
who  are  possibly  within  the  ambiguities  of  Church  law, 
may  number  a  third  or  a  quarter  of  the  congregations  of  the 
larger  towns.  They  would  bitterly  resent  being  deprived 
of  their  incense,  candles,  holy  water,  vestments,  and  proces- 
sions, and  would  rise  against  bishops,  judges,  or  legislators 
who  tried  to  put  them  down. 

On  the  other  hand,  they  are  still  a  minority  of  the  nation, 
exclusively  drawn  from  the  richer  classes  of  the  towns.  To 
sanction  within  the  Established  Church  the  real  objective 
miracles  and  confessional,  with  the  priest's  power  of  personal 
absolution  as  an  habitual  rite,  would  be  to  effect  a  greater 
revolution  than  anything  that  has  been  done  since  the  time 
of  Elizabeth.  It  may  come ;  but  at  present  the  mass  of  the 
electorate  would  refuse  by  ten  to  one  to  admit  it  into  the 
Establishment.  But  the  ritualist  movement  is  now  so  strong, 
with  leaders  so  immeasurably  superior  both  in  character 
and  brains  to  any  of  the  old  Evangelicals,  the  tidal  wave  to 
Catholicism  runs  now  so  broad  and  deep,  that  it  looks  like 
a  hopeless  task  for  the  Bishops  to  stem,  with  bland  episcopal 
counsels,  the  tendency  they  have  so  long  trifled  with,  minimised, 
and  even  encouraged.  And  yet  if  they  do  not,  if  there  be  more 
rebellion,  more  scandals,  more  open  Romanism  in  the 
Church,  the  British  public  —  which  is  still  Protestant  in  the 
mass  —  will  knock  aloud  at  the  doors  of  the  House  of  Lords 
and  of  Commons ;  and  will  insist  that  these  Popish  practices 
and  priestly  usurpations  shall  no  longer  be  carried  out  by 
the  wealth  and  prerogatives  of  a  Parliamentary  Church. 


XVIII 

PRIMARY   EDUCATION 

(i897) 

The  elementary  teaching  of  the  children  of  the  people, 
which  ought  to  be  a  simple  problem  for  experts  in  finance  and 
in  administration,  has  been  most  woefully  obscured  by  the 
clamour  of  sects  and  priests.  The  greater  part  of  the  hot 
controversy  we  have  lately  heard  turns  on  the  question  — 
"How  shall  the  children  be  got  to  profess,  or  at  least  to  be 
counted  as  members  of  this  or  that  theological  sect  ?"  Those 
who  cry  out  most  loudly  about  the  "intolerable  strain"  on 
the  voluntary  schools  are  often  those  who  care  least  for  the 
education  of  the  people,  those  who  would  gladly  do  anything 
they  could  to  discredit  and  reduce  the  efficiency  of  the  Board 
schools.  The  real  aim  is  to  get  hold  of  public  money  to  pro- 
mote Church  interests  —  not  in  order  to  teach  the  children. 
Underneath  the  whole  agitation  is  the  unfair,  untrue, 
misleading  use  of  the  term  "voluntary  schools."  There  are 
no  voluntary  schools.  A  "voluntary"  school  once  meant  a 
school  supported  by  voluntary  subscriptions  —  like  a  hos- 
pital, a  club,  or  an  institution,  maintained  by  the  subscrip- 
tions of  those  who  think  they  serve  a  good  purpose.  Ele- 
mentary schools  managed  by  churches  and  sects  are  almost 
as  completely  State  or  Public  schools  as  are  any  Board 
schools.  The  "voluntary"  element  is  now  (in  1897)  re- 
duced to  less  than  one-sixth  —  which  is  not  a  bona  fide 
proportion  at  all.     If  a  hospital  got  more  than  five-sixths 

214 


PRIMARY   EDUCATION  215 

of  its  income  from  public  grants  and  less  than  one- sixth 
from  its  subscribers,  could  it  continue  to  inscribe  on  its  portal 
the  proud  motto  —  "supported  by  voluntary  subscriptions" ? 
It  would  be  a  fraud.  What  is  the  point  at  which  clerical 
managers  will  cease  to  call  denominational  schools  "volun- 
tary," on  the  ground  that  there  are  still  some  subscribers 
left?  If  the  sixth  part  fell  to  a  twelfth,  or  a  twenty-fourth 
part,  would  they  still  be  "voluntary"  schools?  They  would, 
no  doubt,  insist  on  being  denominational,  and  also  self-con- 
trolled —  whilst  maintained  out  of  the  general  taxes. 

Now,  Xewton  Hall  is  a  true  "voluntary"  school,  and  I  can 
hardly  think  of  any  other.  Newton  Hall  is  a  place  of  edu- 
cation, wholly  maintained  by  the  free  offerings  of  those  who 
desire  the  success  of  its  work.  The  whole  of  the  expenses 
of  every  kind  are  provided  by  voluntary  gifts,  and  the  whole 
of  the  teaching  is  offered  without  payment  or  fee  by  those 
who  choose  to  accept  it.  We  should  decline  to  accept  any 
kind  of  public  money  from  the  State,  the  Rates,  or  County 
Council,  because  we  would  accept  no  control,  no  test,  no 
inspection,  no  examination,  and  no  interference  from  any 
official  authority.  Public  money  implies  public  control; 
and  Newton  Hall  consistently  refuses  both.  But  the  de- 
nominational bodies  which  clamour  for  public  money  without 
submitting  to  public  control,  and  which  claim  the  right  to 
teach  dogmas  very  odious  to  many  tax-payers,  base  their 
claim  on  a  juggling  use  of  the  word  "voluntary." 

There  are  hospitals,  libraries,  musical  societies,  honestly 
and  truly  voluntary,  which  are  doing  as  much  good  work 
as  the  "voluntary"  schools.  It  would  be  ridiculour  if  they 
clamoured  to  have  more  than  five-sixths  of  their  expenditure 
found  them  by  the  State,  and  still  claimed  the  right  to  provide 
only  such  medical  aid,  such  books,  such  entertainment,  as 
they  thought  good,  however  repugnant  these  might  be  to 


2l6  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  tax-payers  who  found  the  funds.  Why  should  not  the 
Homoeopathic  Hospital,  the  London  Library,  the  People's 
Palace,  complain  of  the  "intolerable  strain"  on  them  caused 
by  the  competition  of  Bartholomew's,  the  British  Museum, 
and  the  National  Gallery,  with  the  "bottomless  purse"  of 
the  nation?  Foundation  Schools,  Colleges,  Universities, 
and  Scientific  Colleges,  neither  ask  nor  obtain  grants  from 
taxation,  without  submitting  their  management  to  public 
and  official  control. 

When  the  nation  undertook  to  found  a  complete  and  sys- 
tematic plan  of  public  -instruction  for  the  children  of  the 
people,  there  was  only  one  logical  and  permanent  basis. 
It  was  for  the  State  to  offer  a  general,  free,  quite  elementary, 
but  strictly  secular  instruction  —  giving  every  facility  for 
the  religious  communions  to  work  their  own  schools  as  they 
pleased,  but  without  grants  of  money,  and  to  have  full  op- 
portunity and  the  use  of  the  school-houses  for  the  religious 
teaching  of  their  own  members.  It  was  a  fatal  mistake  to 
make  education  compulsory.  Almost  alone  of  social  re- 
formers, the  Positivists,  along  with  some  followers  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  opposed  compulsion.  Most  of  the  evils  and  con- 
troversies followed  on  the  unwise  and  unconstitutional  craze 
for  compulsion.  The  attempt  to  force  a  theological  education 
on  masses  of  people  who  held  a  dozen  different  theologies, 
and  many  of  them  none  at  all,  was  a  fatal  dilemma.  The 
results  were  all  the  feeble  compromises  and  what  Mr.  Riley 
and  his  friends  call  "School  Board  religion."  Positivists  can 
sympathise  with  this  dislike  of  a  "School  Board  religion," 
which,  after  all,  is  only  an  attempt  to  get  something  colour- 
less which  shall  be  no  definite  religion  at  all,  and  yet  which 
all  those  who  have  deep  feelings  on  religion  very  much  reject. 

If  Positivists  urge  a  system  of  secular  education  in  all 
State  schools,  and  in  all  schools  receiving  public  money,  it 


PRIMARY   EDUCATION  217 

is  not  that  they  advocate  secular  education  by  itself,  for 
Positivists  are  most  fervent  believers  in  a  truly  religious 
education.  In  principle  we  hold  that  education  ought  to  be 
imbued  with  the  religion  of  both  teachers  and  taught,  and 
indeed  that  it  is  a  part  of  religion,  and  a  kind  of  religion. 
Because  they  give  to  religious  education  a  meaning  so  wide, 
real,  and  sincere,  they  object  to  lay  officials  of  the  State 
attempting  to  give  religious  education.  As  a  matter  of 
principle,  we  would  see  all  education  strictly  religious, 
taught  bv  men  whose  lives  are  dedicated  to  religion,  with 
religious  ideas,  emblems,  and  forms  at  every  turn  to  ennoble 
and  inspire  every  step  in  the  education. 

The  kind  of  religious  education  claimed  by  Anglicans  or 
Catholics  is,  after  all,  but  a  stunted  kind  of  compromise,  and 
does  not  go  far  enough.  In  Xewton  Hall,  however  rudi- 
mentary are  its  resources,  arithmetic,  geometry,  physics,  or 
sociologv  mav  receive  a  tone  that  is  at  once  scientific  and 
religious,  and  there  is  not  a  lesson  that  cannot  be  clothed 
with  a  religious  sanction  and  religious  associations.  That 
can  be  done  by  the  Positivist  scheme  of  thought,  and  by 
that  alone.  And  thus  Positivists  can  sympathise  with  all 
that  Air.  Riley  or  Cardinal  Vaughan  insist  as  to  the  value 
of  a  religious  elementary  school.  Only  we  say  —  not  in 
the  perfunctory  way  that  a  State-paid  official  would  give  it, 
and  certainly  not  with  our  money,  any  more  than  Air.  Riley 
or  Cardinal  Vaughan  would  like  to  have  Positivism  taught 
at  their  expense.  Let  Catholics,  Anglicans,  and  Positivists 
give  their  own  children  a  Catholic,  Anglican,  or  Positivist 
education  from  first  to  last.  But  let  neither  of  them  ask 
Baptists,  Jews,  Theists,  and  Agnostics  to  pay  for  it.  Still 
less,  let  none  of  these  suppose  that  a  really  religious  education 
in  their  sense  can  ever  be  taught  by  compelling  children  to 
learn  a  catechism  and  repeat  a  few  prayers. 


2l8  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

But  this  ideal  of  a  denominational  education  cannot  yet 
be  reached,  with  millions  of  children  to  be  taught,  of  differ- 
ent religious  persuasions  and  of  none  at  all.  The  solution 
is  plain  and  simple.  Give  them  the  best  attainable  ele- 
mentary schools,  without  fee,  without  compulsion,  open  to 
all  freely  —  instruction  strictly  confined  to  rudiments  — 
hours  not  very  long  —  no  pretence  of  religious  instruction 
—  no  public  money  without  public  management.  Then  let 
the  prayers,  ceremonies,  and  all  religious  teaching,  and  any 
devotional  practice  desired,  be  supplied  by  various  religious 
bodies  on  their  own  terms,  in  their  own  ways,  in  the  public 
schoolrooms  if  they  like,  in  their  own  churches  or  school- 
rooms if  they  prefer  it,  but  entirely  at  their  own  costs  and 
charges.  There  would  thus  be: — (i)  Public  elementary 
schools,  for  rudiments  only,  in  every  sense  free,  and  without 
any  religious  instruction.  (2)  Religious  instruction,  offered 
by  religious  bodies,  purely  voluntary,  in  or  out  of  the  public 
school-houses,  at  the  sole  management  and  cost  of  such 
bodies,  but  with  every  material  facility  found  them  by  the 
public  authority.  There  would  be  (3)  voluntary  denomi- 
national schools,  managed,  maintained,  and  founded  by 
religious  bodies  at  their  sole  cost  and  responsibility,  receiv- 
ing no  public  money,  but  any  inspection,  convenience,  or 
examination  which  they  chose  to  accept. 

When  the  Act  of  1870  was  first  applied  I  put  forth  a 
paper  insisting  on  these  views  —  that  there  should  be  no 
compulsion,  no  fees,  no  religious  instruction,  nothing  but 
the  rudiments,  and  strict  attention  to  health  and  sanitary 
conditions.  It  is  not  the  business  of  the  State,  I  said,  to 
undertake  any  religious  instruction  whatever.  When  the 
State  (which  has  to  do  with  the  tax-gatherer  and  the  police- 
man) attempts  to  inculcate  opinions,  it  ends  in  the  oppres- 
sion of  the  people  as  well  as  the  perversion  of  truth.     But 


PRIMARY   EDUCATION  219 

every  facility  may  properly  be  given  to  the  free  development 
of  voluntary  efforts  by  such  bodies  as  make  it  their  business 
to  appeal  to  conscience,  not  to  force.  Education  on  such 
lines  flourishes  in  countries  where  education  is  most  success- 
ful. In  France,  in  Germany,  in  the  United  States  it  is  not 
found  that  Protestant  and  Catholic  children  will  not  submit 
to  learn  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic  unless  these  are 
preceded  by  devotional  acts  and  followed  by  dogmatic  teach- 
ing in  the  ritual,  catechisms,  and  manuals  of  their  special 
church  and  sect.  Catholics  and  Protestants  give  their  own 
dogmatic  teaching  in  their  own  way.  And  the  sole  reason 
on  which  Churchmen  in  England  pretend  that  they  cannot 
do  the  same  is  that  the  Establishment  here  has  long  had  a 
preponderant  influence  over  the  Legislature. 

The  recent  agitation  to  secure  more  public  money  for 
sectarian  schools  whilst  retaining  sectarian  management  is 
based  upon  a  misleading  use  of  a  plain  term,  and  is  an 
attempt  still  further  to  encroach  on  fundamental  principles 
of  our  public  life.  It  is  not  so  much  the  children  as  the 
Churches  in  whose  interest  the  demands  are  made;  not  the 
schools  which  feel  the  "intolerable  strain"  so  much  as  the 
sects  which  desire  to  have  subscriptions  replaced  by  taxes. 
And  they  seem  to  have  no  confidence  that  the  children  will 
attend  the  special  religious  instruction  unless  it  is  part  of 
the  official  curriculum.  But  this  is  only  to  call  on  the  State 
to  help  them  to  fill  not  so  much  their  schools  as  their  churches, 
as  if  State-supported  schools  were  to  be  converted  into  an 
entrance  cloister  to  the  Church.  The  language  which  has 
been  used  of  late  by  the  more  violent  advocates  of  denomi- 
national schools  is  so  unreasonable  and  contrary  to  all 
principles  of  English  policy,  that  it  will  assuredly  advance 
the  day  when  the  nation  will  revise  the  whole  system  of 
hollow  compromise  now  in  operation,  and  will  fall  back  on 


220  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

the  only  basis  of  a  permanent  settlement.  In  the  mean- 
time, we  must  hold  fast  to  the  only  possible  rules  of  a  sound 
system :  — 

i.  No  public  money  without  public  control  and  official 
management  responsible  to  the  public  body  supply- 
ing the  money. 

2.  Secular   instruction   in  rudiments   to   be   given   in   all 

State  or  rate-supported  schools. 

3.  Religious   instruction   to   be   given   by   religious   com- 

munities in  their  own  way  and  at  their  own  cost. 


XIX 

METROPOLITAN   SCHOOL   BOARD 

(1870) 

Having  been  invited  by  a  strong  Committee  to  come  forward 
as  a  candidate  for  the  first  London  School  Board  (1870), 
/  submitted  to  them  the  following  address. 

To  the  Electors  for  the  Westminster 
District 

I  am  unexpectedly  called  on  to  offer  myself  for  election  to 
the  Metropolitan  School  Board;  and  I  beg  to  submit  the 
following  statement  of  my  views :  — 

The  work  before  us  is  how  to  give  to  a  million  of  un- 
taught children  the  common  rudiments  of  knowledge.  It  is 
nothing  less  than  this  —  and  it  is  nothing  more.  To  en- 
cumber this  simple  end  with  religious,  social,  or  political 
designs,  would  be  to  make  that  impossible  which  is  already 
difficult. 

The  late  Act  may  be  made  to  give  the  people  a  plain 
elementary  education,  if  this  its  purpose  is  worked  out  with 
energy  and  good  sense.  It  will  certainly  fail  if  it  be  made 
a  field  for  religious  and  political  cabals. 

The  great  task  before  the  School  Board  will  be  to  see 
that  no  class  of  the  people  are  left  outcasts  from  the  scheme. 
The  right  way  to  bring  them  into  the  schools  is  to  make 
them  truly  the  schools  of  the  people;  schools  which  they 
can  feel  proud  of  as  their  own.     Root  out  all  class  and  sec- 

221 


222  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

tarian  jealousies,  make  the  life  of  the  children  there  more 
healthy  and  more  happy,  and  the  schools  will  be  filled  with- 
out the  oppressive  machinery  of  foreign  bureaucracy.  The 
problem  is  how  to  make  the  schools  really  useful,  rather 
than  how  to  force  the  people  to  use  them. 

But  schools  are  a  mockery  to  the  very  poor,  unless  they 
are  free.  And,  since  the  use  of  a  public  institution  can 
never  be  degrading,  the  primary  education  of  the  State 
should  be  in  principle  gratuitous. 

This  need  involve  no  undue  burden  on  the  tax-payer. 
Elementary  education  means  the  ordinary  rudiments  of 
knowledge,  and  to  that  I  would  strictly  confine  it.  The 
National  School,  though  it  is  to  teach  a  great  many  chil- 
dren, is  not  to  teach  too  many  things.  I  am  entirely  opposed 
to  the  views  of  those  who  see  in  the  Act  a  new  scheme  for 
the  diffusion  of  moral,  scientific,  and  technical  knowledge. 
Education  in  the  high  and  wide  sense  of  the  term  belongs 
to  a  different  and  independent  agency.  And  I  am  wholly 
opposed  to  the  State  undertaking  a  task  so  vast  and  so 
vague  by  means  of  a  national  tax. 

On  this  ground  I  hold  that  it  is  not  the  business  of  the 
State  to  undertake  any  religious  instruction  whatever.  When 
the  State  (which  has  to  do  with  the  tax-gatherer  and  the 
policeman)  attempts  to  inculcate  opinions,  it  ends  in  the 
oppression  of  the  people,  as  well  as  the  perversion  of  truth. 
Things  that  belong  to  conscience  I  would  leave  to  the  free 
efforts  of  those  powers  which  appeal  to  reason  and  do  not 
rest  on  force.  On  these  grounds  I  hold  that  State  education 
should  be  not  only  unsectarian  but  secular. 

But  if  the  State  has  a  very  limited  sphere  in  education, 
every  facility  may  be  given  for  the  free  development  of 
voluntary  efforts.  There  is  no  real  difficulty  in  working  a 
State  education  in  the  common  rudiments,  alongside  of  a 


METROPOLITAN    SCHOOL    BOARD  223 

higher  education  given  by  independent  bodies  in  their  own 
way  and  at  their  own  cost. 

It  is  important  that  any  scheme  of  education  should  offer 
exactly  equal  advantages  to  girls  as  to  boys;  and,  indeed, 
that  the  general  instruction  of  both  should  be  in  principle 
the  same. 

Much  must  be  done  that  schools  may  promote  and  not 
injure  the  health  of  the  children.  Short  hours,  ventilation, 
exercise,  and  rational  amusements  are  absolutely  indispen- 
sable; without  which  the  school  becomes  for  the  young  too 
often  a  prison  or  a  sick-house.  I  believe  it  quite  practicable 
to  add  to  instruction  in  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic, 
some  plain  music  —  (not  psalm  singing),  the  rudiments  of 
drawing,  and  some  of  those  means  of  preserving  health 
which  are  common  to  the  children  of  the  rich. 

If  these  opinions  are  likely  to  meet  with  any  support,  I 
am  prepared  to  offer  myself  for  election  to  the  Board;  but 
as  it  would  be  to  me  nothing  but  an  onerous  task,  I  have 
on  principle  declined  to  canvass  for  support  or  to  incur  any 
expense. 


XX 

PARLIAMENTARY  CANDIDATURE 

(1884) 

Reply  to  an  invitation  from  the  Liberal  Committee  of  Leicester 
to  become  a  candidate,  1884 

I  should  count  it  no  small  honour  to  be  selected,  without 
any  seeking  of  mine,  by  such  a  constituency  as  Leicester; 
but  I  feel  no  desire  to  enter  the  House  of  Commons. 

I  have  hitherto  declined  to  become  a  candidate,  because 
I  prefer  to  do  what  I  can  to  form  public  opinion  rather  than 
to  represent  it  in  Parliament.  In  order  that  opinion  may 
be  formed  in  a  really  free  way,  there  need  to  be  at  least  some 
politicians  who  can  speak  out  without  regard  to  party  exi- 
gencies or  the  immediate  wishes  of  any  constituency.  Par- 
liamentary government  cannot  be  worked  without  party 
discipline,  and  party  discipline  implies  the  constant  giving 
of  votes  on  other  grounds  than  personal  conviction.  Were 
I  in  Parliament,  I  should  be  very  slow  to  join  in  a  mutiny 
or  to  enter  a  "cave,"  for  I  recognise  the  paramount  duty  of 
compromise  in  a  practical  legislator.  But  this  makes  it  all 
the  more  essential  that  some  of  those  who  seek  to  influence 
opinion  should  be  free  from  any  concern  for  majorities, 
whether  in  or  out  of  the  House.  One  of  the  most  sinister 
signs  of  the  day  is  the  readiness  of  statesmen  to  treat  the 
bias  of  a  majority  as  equivalent  to  right. 

I  am  publicly  pledged  to  certain  opinions  which  I  could 

224 


PARLIAMENTARY   CANDIDATURE  225 

not  waive  for  tactical  convenience;  but  which  I  could 
hardly  expect  any  constituency  to  leave  me  free  to  assert. 
There  are  three  great  ends  in  politics  which  I  have  specially 
at  heart.  The  first  is  to  resist  the  policy  of  Aggression,  to 
check  the  increase  of  the  Empire,  and  to  prepare  for  its 
inevitable  reduction.  The  second  is  to  deprive  the  State  of 
any  control  over  religion,  and  to  make  it  strictly  neutral  in 
matters  of  opinion  and  in  public  education.  The  third  is  to 
remedy  the  paralysis  of  government  caused  by  the  inter- 
ference of  Parliament  with  the  business  of  administration. 
I  doubt  if  the  House  of  Commons  is  at  present  the  field 
where  any  one  of  these  principles  can  be  most  effectively 
urged.  The  present  war  (in  South  Africa,  1884)  I  look  on 
as  one  of  the  most  wanton  crimes  and  one  of  the  most  gratui- 
tous burdens  which  have  ever  been  imposed  on  our  country. 
But  it  seems  in  vain  to  use  this  language  in  a  House  where 
both  sides  are  equally  eager  for  dominion. 

Were  I  to  enter  on  a  statement  of  my  political  views, 
some  of  them  might  be  thought  too  far  advanced  and  others 
too  Conservative.  I  would  restrict  the  power  of  all  heredi- 
tary authorities  in  government,  with  a  view  to  their  final 
extinction.  I  would  recast  our  system  of  land  laws,  with  a 
view  to  make  the  landowner  and  the  cultivator  one.  I  would 
support  a  genuine  local  government,  both  for  town  and 
country.  And  I  am  for  Home  Rule  in  Ireland.  On  some 
of  the  minor  questions  I  am  probably  out  of  harmony  with 
Radical  majorities.  I  am  opposed  to  compelling  people  to 
become  temperate  by  law,  or  to  force  them  into  State  schools. 
I  am  for  a  simple  manhood  franchise,  and  a  complete  redis- 
tribution of  seats;  but  I  am  opposed  to  any  representation 
of  minorities,  or  groups,  and  also  to  women's  suffrage.  I 
am  also  averse  to  any  change  in  the  marriage  law,  or  to  any 
relaxation  of  the  laws  for  the  prevention  of  disease  and  the 

Q 


226  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

punishment  of  crime.  I  would  not  further  extend  the 
powers  of  the  State  to  check  malpractices  by  private  citi- 
zens ;  but  I  would  strictly  enforce  the  powers  which  the  State 
already  possesses,  and  make  them  a  reality. 

These,  however,  are  questions  on  which  I  need  not  enlarge. 
In  my  opinion,  the  problems  of  the  day  require  social  more 
than  legislative  solutions;  and  as  my  interests  lie  mainly 
with  the  former,  I  do  not  seek  the  honour  of  a  seat  in 
Parliament. 


XXI 

REFORM   OF   THE   LORDS 

(1906) 

The  part  of  the  Upper  House  in  our  parliamentary  system 
is  at  last  seen  to  be  the  critical  question  of  our  time.  Are 
the  Lords  to  be  the  ultimate  Court  of  Appeal,  without  whose 
consent  no  legislation  can  proceed? 

By  the  first  Reform  Act  of  1832,  the  middle  classes  in 
England  obtained  a  preponderant  influence  in  domestic 
affairs,  though  practically  administered  by  a  Liberal  aris- 
tocracy which  kept  international  policy  in  its  own  control. 
From  the  first  Reform  Act  of  1832  down  to  the  third  of 
1885,  the  House  of  Lords,  as  a  body  of  the  Legislature,  was 
neither  strong  nor  respected.  Socially,  of  course,  the  Peers 
retained  their  prestige,  perhaps  even  increased  it  by  im- 
mense creations  (about  150  in  twenty  years),  and  by  pro- 
fusely admitting  wealth  and  public  service.  But  the  House 
of  Lords  was  expected  to  give  way,  when  seriously  confronted 
with  the  House  of  Commons,  and  would  not  venture  to  act 
as  a  "blocker"  to  measures  which  passed  the  Lower  House 
by  large  majorities.  Until  a  generation  ago,  such  a  pro- 
ceeding would  have  been  thought  to  risk  its  very  existence 
as  a  Legislative  body. 

But  the  formation  of  a  genuine  democratic  constituency 
by  the  legislation  of  1885  altered  all  this.  It  was  seen  that 
the  Lower  House  was,  or  would  be  soon,  under  the  influence 
of  the  Labour  masses,  and  that  Labour  was  being  rapidly 

227 


228  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

coloured  by  a  more  or  less  indefinite  Socialism.  When  an 
eminent  Whig  aristocrat  had  gaily  declared,  "We  are  all 
Socialists  now!",  the  whole  of  the  capitalist  and  trading 
class  began  to  distrust  the  House  of  Commons  as  a  palla- 
dium of  Property,  Religion,  and  Order;  and  they  turned  to 
the  House  of  Lords  as  the  last  stronghold  of  our  ancient 
social  institutions  and  the  rights  of  Property,  whether  in- 
herited or  acquired  in  business.  For  a  whole  generation 
the  House  of  Peers  has  become  the  real  but  unofficial  Legis- 
lature of  the  Empire.  Bills  are  debated  in  the  Commons; 
but  no  measure  of  Reform,  vitally  affecting  Society  or 
Property,  could  pass  unless  it  be  approved  by  the  Lords. 

Old-fashioned  Radicals  and  Labour  Democrats  kept  on 
repeating  the  obsolete  cry  that  the  Peers  "represent  noth- 
ing but  themselves."  The  exact  contrary  is  the  truth.  To- 
day they  represent  the  preponderant  power  of  the  rich, 
educated,  and  trained  classes,  the  learned  professions,  the 
tradesmen,  the  owners  of  property  real  and  personal,  the 
titled  orders  down  to  the  cadets  of  a  city  knight.  And  to 
these  they  add  the  interests  of  the  Clergy,  the  Universities, 
official  societies,  the  Army  and  Navy,  and  the  miscellaneous 
classes  whose  capital  is  invested  in  the  Empire,  in  agriculture, 
food,  and  drink.  Of  course,  they  only  represent  all  these 
widespread  interests  in  silent,  secret,  irregular,  and  obscure 
ways.  They  could  hardly  maintain  their  cause  in  any 
formal  and  direct  conflict.  All  that  they  could  do  would  be 
by  indirect  means,  obstruction,  procrastination,  and  false 
issues,  to  stave  off  any  fundamental  change  in  any  of  the 
great  social  institutions,  material  or  moral.  "Thank  God, 
we  have  a  House  of  Lords,"  is  the  unspoken  but  profound 
conviction  of  the  immense  body  of  the  higher  and  middle 
orders.  There  are  no  doubt  plenty  of  rich  men  and  men  of 
aristocratic  connections  and  pretensions  in  the  Commons; 


REFORM    OF    THE    LORDS  229 

but  they  and  the  great  majority  of  M.P.'s  are  under  the 
control  of  the  democracy,  and  dare  not  vote  as  they  would 
like.  So  Property,  Church,  Services,  Professions,  and 
Traders  have  lost  trust  in  the  Commons. 

In  this  indirect  and  unperceived  way,  the  House  of  Lords, 
since  the  defeat  of  Gladstone's  Home  Rule,  has  recovered 
for  obstructive  purposes  the  legislative  authority  it  has  lost 
ever  since  the  age  of  YValpole  and  Chatham,  and  has  again 
become  after  a  century  and  a  half  a  co-equal  branch  of  the 
Legislature  —  and  even  something  more.  But  there  is  a 
further  element  to  this  complex  question.  The  bed-rock  of 
the  Constitution  is  the  joint  legislative  authority  of  three 
independent  powers  —  King,  Lords,  and  Commons.  The 
assent  of  the  Crown  is  no  longer  supposed  to  be  anything 
more  than  a  formality.  But  the  prestige  and  popularity  of 
the  Crown  as  a  national  asset  has  gained  immensely  during 
the  seventy  years  of  Victoria  and  Edward.  And  the  Peers, 
as  a  sort  of  Society  body-guard  of  the  Crown,  as  the  King's 
inseparable  Court,  have  also  gained  not  a  little  in  popular 
interest.  The  public  could  not  imagine  a  Crown  such  as 
that  now  worn  by  Edward  VII. ,  unless  it  were  supported 
by  a  privileged  Court.  So  that  all  ideas  of  "ending  or 
mending"  the  House  of  Lords  involve  a  fundamental  shake 
to  the  Constitution  as  a  whole.  Xow  the  Head  of  the 
British  Constitution  is  at  present  extremely  popular,  even 
with  the  democracy.  The  public  is  not  prepared  to  place 
the  Crown  alone  face  to  face  with  a  democratic  House  of 
Commons.  This  could  not  be  effected  without  a  Revolu- 
tion.    And  we  are  not  ripe  for  revolutionary  changes. 

Needless  to  say  that  I  do  not  accept  —  much  less  defend 
—  the  claim  of  the  Lords  to  be  the  ultimate  power  in  legisla- 
tion. I  am  simply  explaining  the  difficulties  of  the  crisis, 
and  deprecate  the  ignorant  babble  of  democrats  who  say 


230  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

"Leave  the  Lords  to  us!"  As  Professor  Dicey  says  in  his 
Law  of  the  Constitution  (1889,  p.  381),  it  is  a  maxim  of  the 
Constitution  that  the  Lords  must  ultimately  give  way  "to 
the  deliberate  will  of  the  nation";  but  no  one  can  say  when 
or  how  this  has  been  made  manifest.  Governments  have 
defied  the  will  of  the  nation  for  years  —  laughed  at  it,  and 
trampled  on  it.  No  doubt,  if,  at  the  opening  of  the  session, 
the  House  of  Lords  flatly  rejected  the  general  programme 
of  the  Government,  as  formulated  in  the  Speech  from  the 
Throne,  and  in  the  speeches  of  Ministers,  the  general  indig- 
nation of  the  country  would  have  been  shown  with  such 
unanimity  and  violence  that  the  Peers  would  have  yielded 
or  risked  their  existence.  But  it  was  inevitable  that,  after 
months  of  debate,  the  composite  majority,  large  as  it  was, 
should  become  less  cohesive.  Education,  Chinese  coolies, 
Natal  wars,  India,  Ireland,  Labour  —  all  in  turn  differen- 
tiate the  great  Liberal  majority.  The  opposition  of  the 
Lords  comes  on  some  one  of  these  measures,  not  on  all 
together.  And  the  party  is  not  quite  solid  on  any  one  of 
them. 

The  consequence  of  this  is,  that  the  Lords  can  defy  the 
Commons  on  some  definite  point,  whereon  considerable  sec- 
tions of  the  party  are  not  only  lukewarm,  but  even  dis- 
heartened and  divided.  And  it  is  always  difficult  to  show 
that  "the  deliberate  will  of  the  nation"  is  so  keenly  aroused 
to  carry  that  particular  Bill  that  the  Lords  will  not  dare  to 
resist.  If  they  "represented  nobody  but  themselves,"  it 
would  be  plain  sailing.  But,  as  I  have  shown,  they  silently 
represent  immense  forces  of  Wealth,  Tradition,  Experience, 
Self-interest.  All  questions  and  parties  here,  as  elsewhere, 
are  becoming  fused  in  the  great  antagonism  of  Conservative 
Capitalism  against  Democratic  Labour.  Now  the  Lords, 
however  obsolete  their  special  privileges  have  become,  are 


REFORM    OF    THE    LORDS  23 1 

now  the  last  bulwark  of  the  former,  whilst  the  Commons 
are,  in  only  modified  degrees,  the  representatives  of  the 
latter.  That  the  Democracy  will  at  last  have  its  way,  I 
sincerely  hope  and  believe.  But  the  struggle  must  be  very 
keen,  and  in  this  very  conservative,  rich,  complex  society  of 
ours,  must  be  protracted  and  doubtful. 

I  am  only  trying  now  to  call  attention  to  the  crisis,  its 
grave  difficulties  and  its  complicated  nature.  I  put  trust  in 
the  great  experience,  clear  sense,  and  patient  courage  of  the 
Prime  Minister.  It  will  need  all  his  experience,  patience, 
and  resolution  to  lead  to  victory  the  motley  hosts  in  his  com- 
mand. The  great  danger  is  this.  By  the  law  of  the  Con- 
stitution, the  Lords  may  claim  to  reject  any  Bill  that  is  not 
plainly  desired  by  the  nation.  If  led  with  skill  and  cour- 
age, they  may  force  on  a  new  Dissolution  —  possibly  even  a 
second.  A  dissolution  is  a  cruel  tax  on  the  Commons,  but 
only  a  pleasant  holiday  to  the  Lords.  Drained  by  election 
expenses  and  jealousies,  torn  asunder  by  Catholics,  Dis- 
senters, Irishmen,  Home  Rulers,  pro-Boers,  pro-Bengalees, 
Socialists,  Suffragettes,  Trade  Unionists,  Imperialist  Liberals, 
disappointed  Radicals,  and  all  the  heart-burnings  of  a  huge 
composite  majority,  the  national  verdict  of  1906  might  be 
doubtful  in  1909.  There,  "like  a  cormorant,"  the  Spirit  of 
Evil  sits,  ever  on  the  watch.  And  before  the  nation  knew 
it,  the  food  of  the  People  might  be  taxed  to  fill  the  pockets 
of  an  organised  conspiracy  of  capitalists. 


XXII 

A   TRUE   SENATE 

(1906) 

The  House  of  Lords  is  not  only  now  an  anomaly  in  our 
system,  the  only  purely  hereditary  Chamber  in  the  civilised 
world,  but  it  is  now  become  the  burning  problem  of  our 
modern  politics.  For  all  the  resounding  phrases  of  Radical 
defiance,  the  Peers  really  represent,  and  know  that  they 
have  behind  them,  immense  reserve  forces  of  the  rich,  the 
experienced,  the  trading  classes,  the  Church,  the  learned  pro- 
fessions, the  civil  and  military  "services,"  and  those  whom 
Democracy  and  Socialism  alarm.  If  it  is  said  that  "the 
Lords  represent  nobody  but  themselves,"  the  retort  is  that 
the  Lords  secretly  represent  many  millions  of  voters  whom 
the  M.P.'s  they  elected  very  imperfectly  represent.  Not  a 
few  Liberal  members  have  but  half  a  heart  for  the  Bills 
they  are  pledged  to  support,  and  for  which  they  actually 
vote.  And  not  a  few  Labour  members  have  been  elected 
by  men  who  would  be  sorry  to  see  them  get  their  way. 
Now,  the  Peers  practically  represent  immense  Conservative 
masses,  held  in  reserve. 

This  fact,  however  unwelcome  to  all  true  Liberals,  in- 
volves a  most  dangerous  crisis,  from  which  the  only  issue, 
in  the  face  of  rising  Democracy,  is  that  which  we  see  in 
Russia  as  the  alternative  —  Constitutional  Reform  or  vio- 
lent Revolution.  It  is  plain  that  Englishmen  will  not  for 
ever  submit  to   see  the  formal  decisions  of  their  elective 

232 


A   TRUE    SENATE  233 

Chamber  permanently  "blocked"  by  a  petty  knot  of  ordi- 
nary men  whose  right  to  legislate  at  all  is  the  mere  accident 
of  birth.  The  fact  that  accident,  coupled  with  the  dis- 
honesty and  intrigues  of  influential  men  inside  and  outside 
the  House  of  Commons,  gives  them  a  power  which  at  first 
sight  is  preposterous,  will  only  make  the  struggle  more 
bitter.  Thus,  unless  the  two  Houses  can  be  brought  into 
harmonious  working  the  Constitution  must  suffer  some  vio- 
lent shock. 

We  may  assume  that  some  sort  of  Upper  House  there 
will  have  to  be.  The  country  is  certainly  not  prepared  to 
take  the  plunge  into  a  Single  Democratic  Chamber.  All 
ideas  of  "ending"  the  House  of  Lords  must  be  put  aside 
as  chimerical.  All  ideas  of  retaining  it  as  it  is  may  be  put 
aside  as  dangerous  folly.  All  ideas  of  revolutionary  recon- 
struction may  be  regarded  as  at  present  premature.  The 
immediate  thing  to  be  done  is  to  consider  how  the  way  can 
be  prepared  to  mend  the  present  constitution  of  the  House 
of  Lords  so  that  a  violent  collision  between  the  Peers  and 
the  nation  may  be  avoided  or  postponed. 

Now,  the  essential  principle  which  alone  can  jusitfy  the 
existence  of  a  Second  Chamber  in  a  democratic  society  is 
the  fact  that  its  members  enter  it  by  some  form  of  election, 
selection,  service,  or  personal  qualification — other  than  the 
accident  of  birth.  The  first  thing  to  do  is  to  put  an  end  to 
the  vicious  and  obsolete  rule  that  hereditary  right  shall  give 
legislative  power.  It  would  be  a  step  towards  this  if  the 
nation  resolved  that  from  a  given  date  no  new  creation  of  a 
peer  should  endow  his  descendants  with  right  to  legislate. 
This  could  be  done  at  once  without  an  Act  of  Parliament, 
if  the  great  majority  of  the  nation  insisted  on  this  being  an 
understood  practice,  and  that  the  consent  of  the  Crown 
were  obtained  to  its  being  made  effective.     This  might  begin 


234  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

by  Resolution  in  the  House  of  Commons.  There  is  nothing 
to  prevent  the  Crown  from  creating  peerages  for  life;  though 
the  House  of  Lords  some  fifty  years  ago  decided  by  resolu- 
tion that  a  Life  Peer  could  not  sit  and  vote  in  their  House. 
If  it  became  a  settled  rule  of  politicians,  at  least  of  Liberal 
politicians,  that  no  hereditary  Peerage  should  in  future  be 
created,  and  if  his  Majesty  were  to  be  a  consenting  party  to 
such  a  rule,  the  worst  anomaly  of  the  present  system  would 
receive  a  check. 

The  irony  of  the  situation  is  that  such  a  reform  would  be 
exceedingly  popular  with  the  Peers  themselves.  If  the 
Crown  and  the  nation  agreed  that  no  hereditary  Peerages 
should  be  henceforth  created,  the  actual  hereditary  Peers 
would  receive  a  new  dignity  in  that  the  roll  of  their  special 
order  was  closed.  There  is  nothing  on  which  the  Scotch 
Peers  value  themselves  more  than  that  for  two  centuries  no 
new  Peer  has  been  added  to  their  order.  It  may  be  taken 
indeed  that  a  great  body  of  support,  both  aristocratic  and 
democratic,  would  be  given  to  a  self-denying  ordinance 
agreed  upon  between  the  Crown  and  all  progressive  politi- 
cians that  no  hereditary  Peerage  should  be  created  in  future. 
Nobility  would  gain  a  new  honour  without  any  new  privilege ; 
the  public  would  be  freed  from  an  antiquated  obstruction 
without  at  all  increasing  the  power  of  the  titled  class.  The 
recent  creations,  in  effect,  though  not  in  form,  carried  out 
this  principle. 

There  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  Crown  from  creating  a 
Life  Peer.  Whether  a  Life  Peer  could  sit  and  vote  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  without  an  Act  of  Parliament,  is  another 
matter.  I  doubt  if  that  House,  under  the  strain  of  the 
actual  crisis,  would  venture  again  to  close  its  doors  to  one 
who  held  the  King's  Patent.  Lord  Derby,  at  the  height  of 
his  influence,  and  Lord  Lyndhurst,  by  the  magic  of  his  elo- 


A  TRUE   SENATE  235 

quence,  induced  the  Peers  in  1856  to  commit  this  folly.  But 
the  Memoir  of  the  late  Duke  of  Argyll  has  told  us  how 
nearly  a  well-qualified  Life  Peer  came  to  take  his  seat  with- 
out question  (Memoir,  ii.  p.  11).  It  is  exceedingly  doubtful 
if  the  House  would  risk  another  struggle  with  a  Liberal 
Government. 

In  any  case,  I  maintain  that  a  free  creation  of  Life  Peers, 
selected  from  men  of  known  character  and  ability,  who 
had  long  served  the  public  and  had  done  the  State  some 
service,  would  prepare  the  way  for  a  Second  Chamber  of 
wisdom,  prudence,  and  public  spirit.  The  last  creations 
give  examples  of  the  use  to  be  made  of  eminent  politicians 
who  have  no  seat  in  the  Commons.  I  should  like  to  see 
fifty,  or,  if  they  could  be  found,  even  a  hundred,  such  men 
named  as  the  nucleus  of  a  true  Senate.  It  is  not  likely  that 
the  House  of  Lords  would  imperil  their  very  existence  by 
obstinately  closing  their  doors  against  men  who  individually 
were  much  their  superiors  in  public  reputation,  and  who  as 
a  body  represented  the  deliberate  choice  of  the  Crown  and 
of  the  Government.  If  the  Peers  doggedly  refused  to  admit 
Life  Peers,  it  might  be  the  time  to  try  legislation  and  see 
if  they  would  venture  to  throw  out  a  Bill  empowering  Life 
Peers  to  sit  by  Statute,  as  Lords  of  Appeal  do  now. 

If  it  became  a  practice  of  the  Constitution  not  to  create 
in  future  any  hereditary  peerage,  and  if  a  body  of  Life  Peers, 
strong  in  numbers  and  reputation,  were  also  enabled  to  sit 
in  the  House  of  Lords,  the  resistance  of  the  old  House  to 
reforms  would  be  effectually  neutralised,  and  a  gradual  recon- 
stitution  of  the  House  might  proceed  on  regular  lines.  An 
obvious  reform  would  be  the  closing  the  House  to  Peers 
who  simply  succeed  to  a  title.  In  time  the  Upper  House 
would  be  called  personally  by  writ  as  was  once  the  rule. 
Their    qualification    would    be    personal  —  not    hereditary. 


236  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

What  the  personal  qualifications  should  be  opens  a  very 
wide  question  which  may  be  considered  in  a  separate  essay. 
For  the  present  I  limit  myself  to  suggestions  of  immediate 
steps  towards  forming  a  true  Senate  by  substituting  personal 
for  hereditary  claims  to  pass  laws  for  the  nation. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  the  average  Radical  view  condemns 
any  creation  of  new  Peers,  whether  for  life  or  not.  The 
old-fashioned  Reformer's  nostrum  for  "abolition  of  the 
House  of  Lords"  is  not  practical  politics.  England  is  not 
often,  and  not  at  all  at  present,  in  the  mood  for  revolutionary 
change,  unless  the  Peers  were  to  act  like  Russian  bureau- 
crats. I  doubt  if  the  country  is  even  prepared  to  abolish 
the  power  of  the  Lords  to  throw  out  a  Bill  a  second  time, 
when  again  passed  by  the  Commons.  No  such  reform  is 
possible  without  legislation  which  would  involve  a  long  and 
bitter  struggle,  for  the  whole  constitutional  rights  of  the 
Peers  would  be  at  stake.  The  suggestions  I  have  made 
could  be  tried  without  a  Bill  at  all,  and  would  proceed  in  a 
tentative  and  gradual  course  of  reform.  The  country,  as  a 
whole,  desires  a  Second  Chamber  of  qualified  men.  And  I 
hold  that  it  is  more  likely  to  get  a  competent  Senate  by 
gradually  modifying  the  House  of  Lords  than  by  any  revolu- 
tionary attempt  to  suppress  it  altogether  or  to  abrogate  its 
legislative  privileges  at  once. 


XXIII 

THE  LORDS   ONCE  MORE 

(1906) 

The  crucial  problem  of  our  time,  and  one  full  of  complica- 
tions and  puzzles,  is  the  question  of  forming  an  Upper  House 
worthy  of  our  country  and  of  the  great  duties  which  alone 
can  justify  the  existence  of  a  Second  Chamber.  Let  Con- 
servatives remember  that  our  own  House  of  Peers  is  the  only 
remaining  legislative  body  in  the  civilised  world  wherein 
the  representatives  of  some  five  hundred  families  retain  the 
controlling  power  over  the  entire  law-making  machine,  and 
can  at  will  reduce  it  to  a  deadlock.  And  this  exists  in  a 
country  which  is  nearly  as  advanced  a  democracy  as  is  the 
Republic  of  France  or  of  America.  And  let  thoughtful 
Conservatives  further  reflect  that  all  human  history  can  pro- 
duce no  single  example  of  an  hereditary  aristocracy  per- 
manently retaining  exclusive  prerogatives  against  the  will 
of  a  great  nation. 

The  appalling  condition  of  Russia  should  make  even  the 
boldest  reactionary  hesitate  before  straining  his  obsolete 
prerogatives  to  the  bursting-point.  In  theory,  in  law,  by 
usage,  the  Russian  nobles  have  as  much  right  as  has  any 
English  duke  to  "do  what  he  likes  with  his  own."  But, 
irresistible  forces  are  teaching  them  the  dreadful  consequences 
of  persisting  in  enforcing  their  rights. 

We  need  not  consider  the  Radical  idea  of  "getting  rid  of 
the  Lord."     Greece  seems  to  be  the  sole  example  in  Europe 

237 


238  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

of  a  State  with  a  Single  Chamber  —  and  the  example  is  not 
encouraging.  Whilst  the  great  Republics  of  France  and  the 
United  States  retain  their  Senates,  we  may  assume  that  this 
Conservative  nation  of  ours  will  hesitate  to  follow  the  lead  of 
—  Greece.  An  Upper  House  of  some  kind  we  are  destined 
to  have.  It  seems  equally  clear  that  we  will  not  for  ever 
endure  an  hereditary  Chamber  such  as  no  other  civilised  people 
submits  to.  The  problem  is  to  form  a  True  Senate  —  with 
personal,  not  hereditary,  title  —  to  make  laws  for  the  nation. 

I  believe  myself  that  we  shall  ultimately  come  to  a  truly 
elective  Senate  —  and  were  I  to  draft  a  new  Constitution 
I  would  suggest  election  for  some  long  period  by  the  various 
County  Councils  in  proportion  to  the  numbers  of  their  own 
constituencies.  But  this  would  mean  a  fundamental  revision 
of  the  Constitution,  difficult  and  contentious  legislation,  and 
a  deep  social  and  political  upheaval.  I  content  myself  for 
the  present  with  suggesting  a  mode  of  gradual  reform  of  the 
existing  House  of  Lords,  on  less  drastic  lines,  and  feasible 
without  any  revolutionary  Acts  of  Parliament. 

I  have  already  given  reasons  for  our  recurring  to  a  system 
of  Life  Peers  to  be  carefully  selected  from  qualified  public 
men  as  a  mode  of  gradually  permeating  and  reforming  our 
Upper  House.  For  the  moment  I  limit  myself  to  pointing 
out  what  might  be  done  in  this  way  without  any  violent 
collision  of  parties  and  apart  from  disputed  legislation.  A 
good  deal  of  the  same  kind  has  been  quietly  done  of  late  — 
especially  by  recent  Prime  Ministers.  A  hundred  Fitz- 
maurices,  Courtneys,  Shaw-Lefevres,  and  Morleys  would 
make  the  House  of  Lords  a  useful  and  respected  body  in  the 
State. 

We  are  often  told  that  great  questions  are  discussed  in  the 
Lords  with  a  knowledge,  a  sense  of  responsibility,  and  a 
breadth  of  view  that  is  seldom  heard  in  the  Commons.     There 


THE    LORDS    ONCE    MORE  239 

is  much  truth  in  this,  and  the  reasons  for  it  are  many  and 
plain.  A  Peer  has  no  constituents  to  dazzle  or  to  conciliate ; 
he  can  speak  out  with  freedom  and  sincerity ;  he  speaks  at 
his  own  time  to  a  small  and  qualified  audience ;  if  he  chooses 
to  rise,  it  is  because  he  feels  himself  master  of  the  subject ; 
and  he  is  indeed  himself  very  often  an  old  official  of  great 
experience  and  knowledge.  When  men  like  Lord  Lans- 
downe,  the  late  Duke  of  Devonshire  and  Lord  Goschen, 
Lord  Roberts  and  Lord  Rosebery,  Lord  Curzon  and  Lord 
Cromer,  seriously  give  themselves  to  a  "full-dress  debate," 
the  public  has  to  listen,  and  not  seldom  learns  a  good  deal, 
whether  it  likes  their  opinions  or  not.  Therein  lies  the  pres- 
tige of  the  House  of  Lords  and  its  real  hold  on  the  country, 
that  on  great  occasions  it  justifies  its  claims.  Those  who 
deprecate  change  in  the  marriage  laws,  in  the  suffrage,  in 
Church,  law,  and  the  like,  put  their  trust  in  the  Peers,  who 
have  no  constituents  to  badger  them.  And  those  who  object 
to  violent  revulsions  in  Foreign  policy  know  that  a  fair  con- 
tinuity of  action  will  be  maintained  in  the  Lords. 

It  may  be  replied:  Is  not  the  House  of  Lords,  then,  an 
invaluable  institution?  No!  Because  behind  the  twenty 
or  thirty  men  of  great  public  experience  and  proven  capacity 
there  are  four  or  five  hundred  hereditary  cyphers  who  take 
no  part,  and  hardly  care  to  attend  or  listen,  but  who  vote 
mechanically  at  the  party  word  of  command,  with  no  in- 
telligible ground  but  ingrained  prejudice  and  pride  of  caste. 
The  fact  that  the  House  of  Lords  is  often  addressed  by  capable 
statesmen,  and  thereby  retains  its  hold  on  the  country,  is 
really  an  argument,  if  we  consider  it,  that  it  should  henceforth 
consist  of  capable  statesmen.  Let  us  get  rid  of  the  dead 
weight  which  has  nothing  behind  it  but  hereditary  privilege, 
and  yet  has  the  "controlling  influence"  in  all  matters  of 
legislation. 


240  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

I  have  no  taste  for  paper  constitutions  and  shall  not  pretend 
to  make  precise  conditions  and  hard-and-fast  rules.  But 
working  suggestions  are  a  different  thing  and  need  not  be 
embodied  in  formal  clauses.  Age  has  always  been,  and 
should  be,  a  condition  to  qualify  the  members  of  a  true  Senate. 
It  would  not  be  reasonable  to  name  a  man  a  Senator  until 
he  had  reached  the  age  of  thirty-five;  nor  would  it  be  quite 
practical  to  name  him  after  he  had  passed  seventy-five.  The 
ideal  age  perhaps  would  be  between  forty  and  sixty,  but  age 
limits  are  not  much  in  favour  in  a  country  where  Pitt  was 
Prime  Minister  at  twenty-four  and  Gladstone  was  Prime 
Minister  at  eighty-four.  Service  of  the  State  in  important 
functions  or  for  long  periods  would  be  a  most  important 
qualification.  And  to  this  would  be  added  eminence  in  law, 
science,  or  business ;  responsible  office  in  local  administration, 
public  companies,  and  social  institutions.  The  activities  of 
our  people  are  numerous  and  widespread;  and  it  would  be 
ridiculous  to  attempt  to  prescribe  any  narrow  list  of  qualifica- 
tions. Whenever  a  Senate  is  to  be  constituted  legally  by  an 
amendment  to  the  Constitution,  it  will  no  doubt  be  necessary 
to  fix  definite  classes  who  would  be  eligible.  But  as  we  are 
now  discussing  the  selection  of  competent  Life  Peers  by  direct 
creation  by  the  Crown,  it  may  be  enough  to  suggest  the  kind 
of  qualification  needed.  And  the  recent  creations  afford  us 
admirable  types. 

All  that  is  wanted  for  the  moment  is  to  turn  into  an  under- 
stood political  system  the  example  tentatively  set  by  two 
recent  Prime  Ministers.  If  a  hundred  or  a  hundred  and  fifty 
capable  men  could  be  drawn  from  the  House  of  Commons 
(present  or  past),  from  the  diplomatic,  colonial,  civil,  and 
military  services ;  from  County  Councils,  public  institutions, 
co-operative  and  trade  societies;  from  the  ranks  of  Privy 
Councillors,   Judges,  King's  Counsel,  Royal    societies,    and 


THE    LORDS    ONCE    MORE  241 

great  companies,  publicists,  professors,  and  learned  societies 
—  and  without  the  paraphernalia  of  heralds,  or  the  endow- 
ment of  families,  such  men  could  be  infused  into  the  existing 
House  without  any  legislation  or  bitter  contest  —  the  nucleus 
of  a  true  Senate  would  be  there.  The  thirty  or  forty  debating 
Peers  would  be  glad  to  receive  fresh  blood.  The  five  hundred 
silent  and  absent  Peers  would  remain  silent,  absent,  and 
harmless. 

This  scheme  is  not  put  forward  in  any  party  sense.  Both 
parties  ought  to  be  represented.  But,  in  view  of  the  enormous 
disproportion  of  Peers  at  present,  new  creations  should  be  in 
inverse  ratio  to  the  actual  balance  of  parties.  The  creation 
of  hereditary  Peers  might  still  be  retained  as  at  present  for 
those  who  court  rank  and  honour  without  power.  An  ancient 
monarchy  naturally  involves  a  gradation  of  rank  and  royal 
favours.  Only  this  —  newly-created  Peers  with  hereditary 
titles  should  have  no  right  to  sit  in  a  Reformed  Upper  Cham- 
ber —  either  for  themselves  or  their  descendants. 


XXIV 

PARLIAMENTARY  PROCEDURE 

(From  the  "Nineteenth  Century."     1906) 

It  is  now  twenty-seven  years  since  I  made  bold  to  urge 
on  Mr.  Gladstone  the  reform  of  parliamentary  procedure. 
Much  has  been  done  in  the  way  of  reform  since  that  date. 
But  many  of  the  old  evils  remain  —  some  of  them  have 
actually  increased  in  mischief.  Now,  as  then,  the  system  of 
business  in  the  House  of  Commons  has  been  generally  felt 
to  have  ominous  defects.  Now,  as  then,  we  have  seen  the 
House  silenced  and  paralysed  by  its  own  rules;  legislation 
has  been  choked  by  the  plethora  of  forms  that  it  involves; 
the  historic  "inquest  of  the  nation"  tends  to  become  an  in- 
organic public  meeting.  A  new  House  and  a  reforming 
Government  were  pledged  to  take  it  in  hand.  And  as  an  old 
student  of  comparative  jurisprudence  I  again  make  bold  to 
ask,  Why  does  the  British  Parliament  adhere  to  obsolete 
methods  of  work  which  all  other  parliaments  abroad  and  all 
modern  councils  and  boards  at  home  have  utterly  condemned 
and  rejected?  Why  does  it  do  its  business  in  ways  which 
would  ruin  a  railway  or  a  bank,  and  would  make  a  county 
council  an  idle  debating  club? 

In  1881-82  all  thoughtful  critics  of  the  "deadlock  in  the 
House  of  Commons"  were  insisting  on  some  mode  of  closing 
the  interminable  debates.  I  protested  against  the  use  of  the 
outlandish  word  cloture,  but  urged  that  some  form  of  closure 
was  indispensable  and  just.     Well,  closure  has  been  adopted 

242 


PARLIAMENTARY    PROCEDURE  243 

and  has  come  to  stay,  and  has  been  too  often  used  in  arbi- 
trary and  oppressive  ways.  To  protect  minorities  against  its 
abuse  will  be  one  of  the  first  tasks  of  the  new  majority;  but 
as  no  rules  can  make  such  abuse  quite  impossible,  the  real 
protection  against  abuse  of  the  closure  must  always  be  found 
in  the  good  faith  of  the  Minister  in  charge  and  of  the  Speaker 
and  his  deputy. 

A  second  reform  which  we  demanded  twenty-seven  years 
ago  was  some  check  to  be  placed  on  the  monstrous  perversion 
of  the  right  of  questions,  which  had  grown  to  be  an  intolerable 
and  grotesque  nuisance.  In  the  absence  of  any  power  to 
reply  or  to  cross-examine  a  Minister,  "questions"  become 
a  mere  means  of  advertising  busy-bodies,  wasting  time,  and 
cultivating  bores.  This  has  been  to  a  certain  extent  remedied. 
But  until  "questions"  can  be  subjected  to  some  responsible 
control,  and  carry  the  right  to  press  the  Minister  who  an- 
swers, they  had  better  be  got  out  of  the  way  altogether.  They 
amuse  the  House  as  a  game  of  "cross-questions  and  crooked 
answers."  No  Minister  worth  his  salt  (of  £2000  to  £5000) 
ever  tells  anything  that  he  does  not  desire  to  be  known ;  and, 
as  he  seldom  tells  more  than  a  fraction  of  the  truth,  he  only 
misleads  those  who  are  weak  enough  to  believe  him  to  be 
telling  the  whole. 

Years  ago  we  protested  against  the  intolerably  long  hours 
of  debate  —  twelve  hours,  and  at  times  "all  night  sittings," 
and  sessions  prolonged  into  September.  And  all  this  waste 
of  time  for  nothing  except  now  and  then  a  petty  administrative 
change,  and,  in  happy  times,  one  substantial  reform,  cruelly 
mangled  and  sterilised.  Something  has  been  done  to  redress 
the  evil  of  late  sittings  and  sessions  in  the  dog-days ;  but  it 
is  agreed  that  there  is  still  an  immense  amount  of  sheer  waste 
of  time,  play,  dawdling,  and  parading  in  futile  divisions 
through  the  lobbies.     We  all  look  to  the  head  of  a  really 


244  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

business  House  of  Commons  to  put  his  foot  down  on  the 
vugalr  scandal  of  tea-parties  on  the  terrace,  dinner-parties  in 
the  cellars,  gabbling  nonsense  to  stave  off  a  division,  system- 
atic pairing,  "blocking"  by  sheer  trickery,  and  minorities 
consisting  of  overfed,  noisy  young  "bloods,"  whipped  up 
from  balls  and  supper-rooms.  If  "society"  hopes  to  keep 
its  prestige  and  its  privileges  a  little  longer,  it  must  not 
treat  the  Parliament  of  the  Empire  as  if  it  were  a  music- 
hall  or  a  smoking  concert. 

It  is  not  the  part  of  those  who  have  not  sat  in  Parliament 
to  discuss  the  details  of  practical  procedure,  which  may  safely 
be  left  to  the  experience  of  the  Prime  Minister  and  the  re- 
forming zeal  of  a  House  entirely  recast  in  tone,  even  more 
than  in  persons.  But  it  is  quite  open  to  those  who  have  studied 
the  working  of  other  parliaments  and  have  sat  in  a  business 
council  to  suggest  one  substantial  change  in  form,  which 
would  at  once  relieve  the  House  from  pressure,  and  im- 
mensely facilitate  the  work  both  of  government  and  of  legis- 
lation. That  reform  is  to  delegate  the  whole  of  the  business 
now  consigned  to  committees  of  the  whole  House  to  small 
departmental  committees,  specially  selected,  sitting  in  suitable 
rooms  "upstairs,"  and  reporting  to  the  House  in  printed 
reports  after  careful  deliberation.  This,  no  doubt,  has  been 
done  at  times  in  what  are  known  as  "grand  committees." 
But  from  their  constitution  and  methods  of  work  they  have 
not  been  of  very  much  use,  nor  have  they  materially  relieved 
the  House  of  its  ordinary  work  in  committee.  The  proposal 
now  made  is  that  at  the  opening  of  each  session  the  House 
should  nominate  as  many  standing  committees  as  there  are 
separate  ministerial  departments,  say  finance,  foreign  affairs, 
army,  navy,  education,  local  government  (or  possibly,  agri- 
culture, post,  and  railways),  law,  home,  Scotland,  Ireland, 
Colonies,  India  —  that  is,  at  least  twelve  or  fourteen  standing 


PARLIAMENTARY   PROCEDURE  245 

committees,  each  consisting  of  eleven  or  thirteen  members, 
more  or  less.  To  one  of  such  committees  every  Bill,  or 
motion  when  passed  by  the  House,  would  be  referred  for 
consideration. 

If  the  committees  altogether  absorbed  165  members,  this 
would  amount  to  one-quarter  of  the  whole,  and  would  so 
far  set  free  the  other  three-fourths.  It  is  not  proposed  that 
the  committees  should  be  selected  by  the  Government,  or 
by  the  majority,  but  by  a  system  of  proportional  representa- 
tion. The  incurable  defects  of  proportional  representation 
as  applied  to  the  parliamentary  suffrage  throughout  the 
kingdom,  or  in  separate  constituencies,  are  these,  that  in  a 
constituency  of  10,000  or  15,000,  those  who  agree  in  opinion 
have  no  adequate  means  of  conferring  and  meeting;  and, 
if  they  had,  the  masses  of  electors  have  no  definite  opinions 
cut  and  dried,  and  have  no  distinct  choice  of  persons  and 
policies  ready  formed  to  hand.  The  House  of  Commons 
is  exactly  the  body  where  proportional  representation  could 
have  a  fair  field  and  could  be  used  with  entire  ease  and  success. 
It  would  be  easy  to  apportion  the  members  of  the  committees 
so  as  to  give  each  party  or  group  exactly  the  same  proportionate 
strength  in  the  committees  that  they  hold  in  the  House.  If 
the  total  number  of  committee  men  were  165,  a  party  that 
commanded  two-thirds  of  the  House  could  elect  1 10 ;  a  group 
which  numbered  one-fifth  could  elect  33;  a  group  which 
numbered  one-tenth  could  elect  16;  a  group  which  numbered 
only  twelve  could  elect  3.  Every  four  M.P.'s  could  elect  one 
committee  man;  and,  by  careful  selection,  the  whole  body 
of  committees  would  be  an  exact  mirror  of  the  House. 

The  twelve  or  thirteen  committees  should  sit  as  committees 
on  private  Bills  now  sit,  with  power  to  call  before  them  and 
examine  any  Minister  in  either  House,  to  hear  any  M.P. 
who  desired  to  address  them,  and  to  obtain  information  from 


246  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Government  offices  or  elsewhere.  They  should  have  power 
to  sit  at  convenient  hours  whether  the  House  were  sitting 
or  not,  and  even  to  meet  when  it  was  not  in  session.  If  they 
had  power  to  summon  and  examine  any  Minister,  they  would 
be  able  to  exercise  a  control  which  the  House  itself  has  long 
lost.  Such  a  power  would  necessarily  imply  the  right  to  sit 
at  need  with  strictly  closed  doors;  and,  in  the  case  of  such 
committees  as  those  on  foreign  affairs,  army,  or  navy,  the 
members  of  them  might  be  sworn  in  as  privy  councillors, 
and  deliberate  with  the  secrecy  and  the  responsibility  of  a 
Cabinet. 

A  small  committee,  not  in  any  case  exceeding  fifteen,  sit- 
ting in  camera,  if  it  chose,  with  no  persons  present  but  those 
specially  summoned,  could  give  a  thorough  examination  to 
every  clause  of  any  Bill,  especially  if  it  could  summon  to 
assist  it  the  legal  and  official  servants  of  the  State.  The  right 
to  examine  and  even  cross-examine  any  Minister,  principal 
or  subordinate,  whether  peer  or  commoner,  would  really 
make  the  answering  serious  and  responsible  questions  an 
important  duty,  and  would  obviate  the  resort  to  a  miscellane- 
ous and  idle  system  of  public  questions  which  never  receive 
honest  or  complete  answers.  It  does  not  follow  that  every 
piece  of  information  obtained  in  committee  need  be  made 
public,  or  even  reported  in  express  terms  to  the  House.  But 
the  committee  would  make  their  report  with  full  and  accurate 
knowledge  of  all  necessary  facts.  As  things  now  are,  the 
House  has  to  pass  Bills  and  clauses  without  more  knowledge 
of  facts  than  it  suits  the  Minister  to  disclose,  and  in  the 
absence  of  the  draftsmen  and  lawyers  who  alone  can  enlighten 
it  on  the  effect  of  the  intricate  verbiage  of  a  Bill.  The  proper 
chairman  of  each  committee  would  be  the  Minister,  principal 
or  subordinate,  for  that  department. 

When  the  committee    had    fully    considered    its    Bill,  the 


PARLIAMENTARY   PROCEDURE  247 

chairman  would  submit  to  the  House  a  printed  report  con- 
taining the  conclusions  of  the  committee  or  of  the  majority, 
with  reasons  and,  if  necessary,  tables  of  returns  or  legal 
opinions  obtained.  The  minority  could  add  their  own  report, 
and  any  member  could  raise  a  new  point  when  the  report  was 
before  the  House.  It  is  obvious  how  greatly  superior  in  con- 
venience and  business  efficiency  would  be  such  a  course  of 
patient  study  of  clauses,  with  expert  advice,  as  compared 
with  the  rough  and  tumble  of  committees  of  the  whole  House, 
where  intricate  clauses  are  tossed  about  from  side  to  side  in 
a  noisy  House,  with  one  or  two  hundred  members  chatting, 
sleeping,  running  in  and  out,  not  one  in  ten  having  an  idea 
what  is  the  immediate  business. 

The  way  in  which  Acts  of  Parliament  are  hatched  has  long 
been  the  scandal  of  our  constitution,  the  despair  of  business 
men,  and  the  insoluble  puzzle  of  the  law  courts.  The  Legis- 
lature is  found  to  have  said  things  it  never  meant  to  say,  and 
to  have  left  unsaid  that  which  it  intended.  Who  can  be  sur- 
prised? A  Minister,  with  his  draftsmen,  has  prepared  an 
elaborate  Bill  full  of  technical  details  which  he  himself  under- 
stands most  imperfectly,  and  which  the  ordinary  M.P.  does 
not  understand  at  all.  They  have  been  wrangling  for  hours 
over  clauses.  A  few  men  on  the  Opposition  side,  with  expert 
knowledge,  press  for  amendments  which  favour  their  own 
interest.  The  Minister  cannot  meet  them  with  equal  readi- 
ness. His  supporters  are  tired,  puzzled;  they  have  ladies  on 
the  terrace,  or  they  cannot  be  got  away  from  dinner-parties, 
dances,  or  theatres.  The  whip  gets  anxious,  and  whispers 
that  he  thinks  the  troublesome  people  must  be  squared.  A 
hurried  draft  of  concession  or  compromise  is  prepared,  without 
time  for  due  consideration  or  expert  advice  as  to  its  working. 
The  opposition  is  "placated";  the  Minister  saves  his  credit 
by  the  skin  of  his  teeth ;  the  Bill  becomes  law ;  and  the  public 


248  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

smarts  under  some  fresh  miscarriage  of  justice  or  administra- 
tive knot. 

This  is  no  exaggerated  picture  of  legislative  methods. 
Ministers,  officials  of  all  kind,  permanent  secretaries  of  de- 
partments, draftsmen,  lawyers,  judges  are  all  agreed  that  it 
is  a  system  of  miserable  impotence  and  confusion.  They 
struggle  against  it ;  and  by  energy  and  self-sacrifice  stave  off 
some  of  the  worst  consequences.  But  they  have  to  endure 
many  of  its  evils  in  silence.  The  evils  are  absolutely  inevitable 
so  long  as  Parliament  persists  in  the  obsolete  system  of  settling 
the  intricate  details  of  long  Bills  in  committees  of  the  whole 
House,  which  necessarily  become  either  a  scramble  with 
varying  chances,  or  else  are  passed  mechanically  without 
consideration  at  all  by  arbitrary  guillotine.  The  House 
would  never  have  endured  such  a  method  so  long,  had  it  not 
been  that  Mr.  Gladstone  revelled  in  argumentative  tussles 
where  he  had  no  rival  or  match;  and  in  Mr.  Balfour's  time 
the  majority  acquiesced  in  automatic  closure  by  compart- 
ments, calmly  abdicating  all  the  duties  of  a  House  of 
Commons. 

It  would  pass  the  wit  of  man  to  devise  any  plan  whereby 
a  complicated  Bill  of  150  clauses  could  be  settled  in  an  as- 
sembly of  200  to  300  persons,  moving  up  and  down,  in  and 
out,  three-fourths  of  them  busy  with  other  things,  and  not 
one  in  ten  able  to  follow  the  discussion  without  expert  advice 
and  printed  materials  before  them.  Many  a  ministerial  Bill 
is  as  complicated  and  technical  as  some  private  Bills  pro- 
moted by  a  railway  or  a  corporation.  But  who  would  dream 
of  sending  a  Bill  for  a  new  branch  line,  or  a  gas  or  water 
Bill,  to  be  settled  by  the  whole  House  in  loose  order?  Yet 
this  has  to  be  done  with  many  a  public  measure  of  infinitely 
more  importance  than  any  railway  or  gas  Bill. 

If  the  whole  of  the  business  now  muddled  over  in  committee 


PARLIAMENTARY   PROCEDURE  249 

of  the  whole  House  were  relegated  to  special  standing  com- 
mittees sitting  in  proper  chambers  "upstairs,"  it  is  obvious 
that  an  immense  saving  of  time  would  be  effected,  and  also 
a  great  acceleration  of  legislative  output.  As  things  now 
stand,  one  large  contentious  Bill,  at  most  two  or  three  such 
Bills,  are  the  utmost  any  Government  can  succeed  in  pushing 
through  in  the  weary  seven  months  between  January  and 
September.  Sometimes  a  ridiculous  little  Bill,  like  the  sham 
Aliens  Bill  of  1905,  blocks  the  way  and  drags  on  week  after 
week,  ending  in  mere  flourishes  and  wanton  mischief.  So, 
too,  the  hollow  Unemployed  Bill  ended  in  a  nauseous  kind 
of  smoke.  And  the  late  Government  plaintively  wailed  out 
that  they  could  not  proceed  with  large  and  urgent  measures 
because,  in  fact,  they  were  choked  with  their  own  smoke. 
Why  this  deadlock?  Because  a  Bill,  even  a  bogus  Bill, 
meant  as  a  vulgar  election  cry,  or  a  sham  Bill  designed  to 
meet  an  awkward  demand,  has  to  be  tossed  about,  like  a  foot- 
ball in  a  scrimmage,  in  a  full  House  which  gives  every  facility 
for  bunkum  and  obstruction,  and  yet  in  which  no  serious 
business  can  be  taken  up  until  the  scrimmage  has  kicked 
itself  off  the  field. 

Real  working  committees  would  sit,  of  course,  simultane- 
ously, not  necessarily  all  at  the  same  hour,  or  even  on  the 
same  day;  but  there  would  be  no  reason  why  eight  or  ten 
serious  Bills  might  not  be  considered  in  the  same  session, 
just  as  eight  or  ten  private  Bills  now  are  considered  day  by 
day  in  different  rooms.  Between  January  and  April  eight 
or  ten  measures  could  have  been  in  due  order  reported  to  the 
House.  The  House,  of  course,  would  not  be  bound  by  the 
finding  of  the  committee.  It  might  reject  the  whole  scheme 
once  for  all,  or  it  might  return  it  to  the  committee  for  re- 
consideration, with  any  "instruction"  or  comment.  The 
point  would  be  that  the  whole  House  would  not  attempt  the 


25° 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


impracticable  and  mischievous  task  of  trying  to  do  the  work 
of  committee  in  a  miscellaneous  scramble  of  200  or  300  mem- 
bers, many  of  whom  have  neither  special  knowledge  of  the 
business,  nor  particular  interest  in  it,  unless  perhaps  to  worry, 
obstruct,  or  advertise  themselves. 

The  House  —  once  relieved  of  the  weary  work  of  passing, 
in  unwieldy  meetings  of  a  desultory  kind,  interminable  strings 
of  technical  clauses,  relieved  of  the  idle  worry  of  trumpery 
"questions,"  the  moving  for  "returns,"  nomination  of  com- 
missions, etc.,  all  which  purely  departmental  business  would 
go  to  the  proper  departmental  committee,  not  to  the  full  House 
—  would  get  rid  of  sources  of  delay,  trifling,  and  solicitation. 
All  need  or  excuse  for  prolonged  public  sittings  would  be 
at  an  end.  Sittings  from  2  p.m.  to  midnight,  even  with  a 
break,  and  still  occasionally  prolonged  to  the  small  hours  of 
the  morning,  are  utterly  irrational  and  destructive  of  true 
legislation.  They  exhaust  Ministers ;  they  encourage  loung- 
ing in  and  out;  they  make  the  whole  atmosphere  of  the 
place  desultory  and  unreal.  The  average  man  does  not 
keep  his  mind  on  the  stretch  upon  the  same  business  for  more 
than  four  or  five  hours  to  any  useful  result.  When  the  House 
sits  for  eight,  ten,  or  twelve  hours,  even  with  a  dinner  interval, 
the  practice  grows  up  for  ordinary  members  to  drop  in  once, 
or  it  may  be  twice,  making  up  four  or  five  hours  of  actual 
attendance  at  debate.  The  ordinary  member  may  spend 
three  or  four  more  hours  somewhere  within  reach.  But  the 
professional  or  the  "smart"  M.P.  is  satisfied  if  he  can  put 
in  an  appearance  in  debate  of  an  hour  or  two  in  the  course 
of  the  week,  and  turn  up  in  time  to  vote  when  he  has  received 
'  a  three-line  whip.'  All  this  make-believe  of  being  a  legislator 
is  encouraged  and  almost  excused  by  prolonging  the  sittings 
to  ten  hours,  which  is  far  more  than  flesh  and  blood,  body  and 
bones,  can  bear. 


PARLIAMENTARY    PROCEDURE  25 1 

This  scandal  can  only  be  removed  by  making  the  public 
sittings  of  the  House  half  as  long  —  say,  four  to  five  hours  — 
but  ensuring  that  these  shall  be  sittings  of  real  continuous 
work.  If  this  limit  were  observed,  and  the  House  rose  at 
7  p.m.  (and  never  sat  later  than  10  p.m.)  members  could  be 
required  to  attend  regularly ;  the  division  lists  and  perhaps 
even  attendances  could  be  recorded  and  published;  and 
constituencies  could  know  next  morning  where  their  member 
had  been.  But  public  sittings  of  five  hours  could  only  be 
secured  by  relegating  the  whole  business  now  done  in  com- 
mittee of  the  whole  House  to  departmental  committees  sitting 
simultaneously  "  upstairs."  In  county  councils  and  in  most 
deliberate  bodies  it  is  the  rule  to  require  members  attend- 
ing to  enter  their  names  in  the  register  of  the  day,  and  a 
wholesome  rule  it  is.  M.P.'s  who  are  proud  to  have  their 
names  recorded  at  a  public  dinner  or  a  great  society  "crush" 
would  find  their  energies  stimulated  if  their  attendances 
at  St.  Stephen's  crush  received  the  same  publicity.  The 
mischief  is  that  the  old  superstition  of  eighteenth  century 
gentlemen  still  survives,  that  the  House  of  Commons  is  an 
aristocratic  club,  not  the  engine-house  of  a  mighty  empire, 
burdened  with  the  hard  lives  of  countless  millions  who  toil 
and  cry  for  help. 

It  will  be  said  that  the  method  of  special  or  select  com- 
mittees has  been  tried,  and  with  no  great  result.  But  "grand 
committees"  have  usually  been  far  too  large,  and  selected 
only  to  gratify  friends  or  to  "placate"  opponents;  and  they 
often  admit  the  very  men  who  give  most  trouble.  The 
wreckers  of  Bills  may  be  heard,  but  they  are  not  the  right 
persons  to  decide  on  the  issue.  Permanent  standing  com- 
mittees, carefully  chosen  by  the  whole  House,  and  in  fact 
an  authentic  mirror  of  it,  with  the  Minister  or  his  deputy 
in  the  chair,  would  be  free  from  many  of  the  evils  which 


252 


REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 


neutralise  the  work  of  "select"  committees.  And  when  these 
select  committees  had  reported,  the  old  machinery  had  still 
to  be  gone  through,  so  that  the  result  was  too  often  waste  of 
time  as  well  as  futile  labour  to  all  concerned.  There  would 
be  no  difficulty  in  adding  a  qualified  member  occasionally 
to  a  committee,  or  in  members  exchanging  from  one  to  an- 
other. If  a  Minister  were  chairman  of  a  committee,  and  it 
were  thought  essential  to  examine  him  for  information,  the 
chair  would  be  taken  for  the  time  by  a  deputy-chairman, 
nominated  for  the  occasion.  A  special  select  committee 
might  even  be  formed  to  hold  occasional  or  emergency  sittings 
during  the  recess.  On  some  such  plan  as  this  every  foreign 
parliament,  every  county  council,  every  company,  bank,  or 
public  institution  does  its  work.  The  British  House  of 
Commons,  alone  of  modern  chambers,  tries  to  settle  com- 
mittee details  in  a  fluid  crowd,  where  garrulity,  obstruction, 
and  desultory  habits  have  forced  ministers  to  resort  to  the 
scandal  of  "closure  by  compartments." 

Any  such  scheme  of  standing  departmental  committees 
involves  the  surrender  of  the  whole  of  the  work  of  Private 
Bill  legislation.  The  system  on  which  railways,  corpora- 
tions, and  companies  obtain  their  Acts  may  not  be  so  rife  as 
it  once  was  of  glaring  scandals,  but  it  is  still  an  anomaly 
charged  with  mischief  and  hardship.  It  survives,  just  as  the 
trial  of  election  petitions  by  the  House  itself  survived,  owing 
to  powerful  vested  interests,  and  the  jealousy  of  Parliament 
not  to  part  with  any  of  its  privileges.  Landlords  and  capital- 
ists in  Parliament  struggle  to  keep  all  dealings  with  property 
under  their  own  eye,  and  they  shrink  from  giving  outside 
authorities  judicial  and  legislative  powers.  But  they  will 
have  to  do  so.  The  civilised  world  can  offer  no  spectacle 
of  "how-not-to-do-it"  more  grotesque  than  the  sight  of  a 
committee-room  in  the  Lords  sitting  on  a  complicated  Bill 


PARLIAMENTARY   PROCEDURE  253 

promoted  by  a  great  railway  or  a  corporation.  The  room  is 
hung  with  plans,  sections,  huge  tabulated  schedules,  or 
engineers'  models.  Great  lights  of  science  are  examined  by 
consummate  masters  of  every  forensic  art.  Expert  witnesses 
(the  "d — d  liars"  of  a  great  judge)  are  heard  day  by  day 
to  expound  mysteries  which  only  a  trained  professional  can 
follow.  The  evidence  would  fill  a  Blue-book  and  costs 
£1000  a  day.  All  this  time  the  chairman  (usually  a  man 
of  sense  and  experience)  does  his  best  to  follow  the  discussion, 
and  he  gets  a  fair  notion  of  what  the  main  points  are.  By 
his  side  sits  a  master  of  fox-hounds  yawning;  a  weather- 
beaten  colonel  picks  his  teeth;  a  dandy  writes  answers  to 
"smart"  imitations;  and  a  young  guardsman  works  out 
calculations  in  his  betting-book.  After  three  weeks  of  this 
dreary  farce,  when  £20,000  have  been  sunk,  my  lords  find 
that  the  preamble  is  passed. 

If  this  putrescent  scandal  of  Private  Bill  legislation  were 
done  away,  the  rooms,  staff,  and  machinery  upstairs  would 
be  set  free,  and  the  call  on  members'  time  and  labour  im- 
mensely reduced.  Committees  —  the  permanent  departmen- 
tal committees  —  would  meet  at  10  a.m.  for  two  or  three 
hours'  sitting,  three-fourths  of  the  House  being  free  from 
attendance  altogether.  There  would  then  be  ample  time 
for  a  sitting  of  the  House  itself,  of  four  or  five  hours  —  say, 
from  2  p.m.  to  7  p.m.  Abolish  night  sittings  altogether, 
excepting  for  some  urgent  occasion  for  one  or  at  most  two 
hours,  but  always  rising  before  midnight.  That  is  how  all 
other  parliaments,  county  councils,  senates,  boards  of  com- 
panies, and  evenT  business  chamber  in  civilised  countries  do 
their  work.  There  ministers  get  to  work  at  8  a.m.  or  even 
6  a.m.  —  sovereigns  and  autocrats  abroad  have  to  do  it, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  "strenuous"  presidents  of  the  West 
like  Roosevelt   and  Diaz.     British  ministers  retain  the  ob- 


254  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

solete  habits  of  the  Harleys,  Walpoles,  Pitts,  and  Norths 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  men  dined  in  the  early  after- 
noon, and  supped,  gambled,  and  gossiped  at  midnight. 

French  statesmen,  German,  Italian  statesmen,  do  not  rush 
off  to  the  Alps  or  the  seaside  for  "week-ends"  in  the  midst 
of  session.  Nor  do  bank  and  railway  managers,  chief  clerks 
of  great  industries,  run  away  from  the  office,  every  five  or 
six  days,  for  forty-eight  hours  or  even  a  week.  Those  who 
are  responsible  for  the  tremendous  concerns  of  the  British 
Empire  tear  about  the  country,  even  in  session,  to  Scotland 
or  Cornwall,  Cromer  or  Torquay,  by  rail  or  motor,  as  if 
they  were  travelling  "bagmen"  doing  their  trade  round. 
And  when  a  cabinet  council  is  summoned  noble  lords  and 
right  honourable  gentlemen  rush  up  to  town,  just  as  "bookies" 
gather  in  haste  to  a  race  meeting  or  a  football  contest.  We 
pay  British  ministers  £5000  a  year,  without  expecting  them 
to  "attend  to  the  shop,"  as  foreign  ministers  on  a  fifth  of 
their  salary  have  to  do,  as  business  managers  on  a  tenth  of  it 
have  to  do. 

The  excuse  for  this  gad-about  habit  of  British  rulers  is 
that,  in  the  first  place,  they  are  country  gentlemen  and  have 
to  look  after  their  estates;  and  in  the  next  place,  they  are 
so  much  exhausted  by  parliamentary  duties  of  ten  or  twelve 
hours  a  day,  that  they  must  refresh  themselves  with  sport, 
golf,  or  house  parties.  Now,  the  temper  of  the  new  democ- 
racy is  against  paying  the  owners  of  great  estates  £5000  a 
year,  and  it  is  in  favour  of  requiring  men  who  undertake 
public  duties  to  stick  to  them.  If  ministers  were  obliged  to 
sit  in  Parliament  not  more  than  four  hours  in  a  day,  twenty 
to  twenty-four  hours  a  week,  their  health  would  gain,  and 
they  could  prepare  their  Bills,  compose  despatches,  and  meet 
in  council  without  any  hurry  or  strain  at  all.  Since  one- 
fourth  of  the  present  M.P.'s  do    not  own  motors  or  even 


PARLIAMENTARY   PROCEDURE  255 

carriages  and  cannot  afford  cabs  at  night,  late  sittings  are 
a  gross  social  injustice  and  offence.  To  reduce  the  hours  of 
sitting  in  Parliament  is  the  first  condition  of  "efficiency"  in 
Government  —  as  it  is  also  in  legislation. 

The  preposterous  arrangement  of  sessions  in  the  year  is 
another  scandalous  survival  of  ancient  custom,  entirely  due 
to  habits  of  "sport,"  foreign  touring,  and  "society  functions." 
Parliament  seldom  meets  till  fox-hunting  is  ended,  and  by 
ancient  superstition  is  supposed  to  rush  off  to  kill  grouse  on 
the  12th  of  August.  It  goes  to  races,  balls,  Lord's,  and 
courts,  from  April  to  July.  Then  it  goes  to  the  Highlands 
"globe-trotting,"  or  country  seats  from  August  to  February. 
A  shameless  neglect  of  duty.  A  serious  business  Parliament 
would  arrange  to  hold  sessions  in  all  the  four  quarters  of 
each  year,  as  all  business  and  professional  men  do.  It  would 
meet,  say,  in  four  sessions  of  eight  wreeks  each,  leaving 
twenty  weeks  for  recess  —  perhaps  a  long  summer  recess  of 
ten  weeks  and  three  others  of  three  weeks  each. 

Why  Parliament  should  swelter  in  London  during  July, 
August,  and  even  September,  and  then  spend  the  autumn 
in  the  Highlands,  and  the  winter  killing  vermin  and  poultry 
in  the  shires,  bleak  moors,  and  boggy  woods,  no  one  can  say, 
unless  that  it  suits  sporting  men,  magnates,  society  queens 
and  their  daughters.  No  other  Parliament  behaves  with  such 
insolent  indifference  to  public  demands,  and  such  eager 
care  for  its  own  pleasures.  The  needs  of  this  vast  empire 
do  not  vegetate  or  hibernate  between  August  and  February. 
They  say,  of  course,  that  the  ministers  get  on  as  well  without 
Parliament,  and  indeed,  very  often,  even  better.  But  from 
August  to  February  ministers  also  are  scattered  up  and 
down  the  three  kingdoms,  hundreds  of  miles  apart,  and 
hundreds  of  miles  away  from  their  offices,  permanent  offi- 
cials,  papers,   and  libraries.     When  a  war  breaks  out,   a 


256  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

revolution  abroad  or  a  riot  at  home,  the  minister  telegraphs 
to  a  clerk  in  town  to  send  down  the  more  important  papers 
to  peruse  in  the  country. 

The  usual  reply  is  that  when  the  hot  war  of  Parliament 
is  over,  and  the  Temple  of  Janus  at  Westminster  is  closed  — 
the  ecumenical  Temple  of  Janus  is  very  rarely  closed  — 
ministers  require  a  close  time  to  meditate  and  recruit.  Were 
ministers  and  parliament  men  denied  these  indispensable 
holidays,  great  magnates,  we  are  told,  would  hardly  consent 
to  sacrifice  their  ease  by  serving  the  State ;  great  capitalists 
would  not  give  us  their  financial  experience;  lawyers  could 
not  afford  to  assist  the  nation  by  their  learning;  and  eldest 
sons  would  not  gain  the  necessary  training  for  public  life. 
This  is  a  dilemma  which  alarms  the  classes  more  than  the 
masses.  The  latter  simple  folk  cannot  be  brought  to  see 
why  magnates,  capitalists,  men  of  fashion,  and  turfites 
should  want  to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons  at  all.  Perhaps 
the  value  of  their  assistance  hardly  compensates  for  the  in- 
convenience that  during  six  months  on  end  the  House  of 
Commons  is  idle,  and  even  the  Government  of  the  Empire 
is  dispersed  about  the  nation  in  a  round  of  house  parties, 
"local  functions,"  and  country  amusements. 

This  is  not  the  place  —  nor  is  a  mere  outsider  the  man  — 
to  enter  on  many  smaller,  more  or  less  material  and  formal, 
changes  which  are  needed  to  make  the  House  of  Commons 
a  really  business  chamber.  The  trouble  comes  from  retain- 
ing forms  inherited  from  the  days  of  Plantagenet  and  Tudor 
kings.  We  submit  to  trammels  fatal  to  serious  work,  be- 
cause they  come  down  from  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  cen- 
tury. The  "Mother  of  Parliaments"  is  really  the  great- 
grandmother  of  parliaments  in  its  old-fashioned  furbelows. 
First  of  all  comes  the  huge  absurdity  of  meeting  in  a  chamber 
which   will   not   seat   comfortably  half   the    members,   and 


PARLIAMENTARY   PROCEDURE  257 

into  which  only  three-fourths  of  them  can  be  crushed  at  a 
pinch  so  as  to  hear  worse  than  in  the  shilling  gallery  at  a 
theatre.  The  inevitable  result  is  that  a  third,  or  even  half, 
of  the  members  habitually  stay  away  or  lounge  about  the 
precincts.  As  the  nation  will  not  give  them  sitting  room 
and  hardly  even  standing  room,  it  seems  plain  that  the  nation 
only  expects  them  to  look  in  by  groups,  and  for  special  occa- 
sions. The  first  condition  of  a  working  House  is  a  chamber 
wherein  every  one  of  the  670  can  have  his  own  seat.  The 
indecent  scramble  for  places,  the  silly  trick  of  ticketing  seats 
at  midnight,  the  crowding  the  gangways  and  balconies 
as  if  it  were  the  pit  of  a  theatre,  is  utterly  unworthy  of  a 
rational  people  and  an  Imperial  Parliament. 

We  all  know  why,  when  the  Houses  were  rebuilt,  the 
absurd  narrowness  of  space  was  retained.  Simply  because 
the  oblong  form  of  the  old  thirteenth-century  chapel  of  St. 
Stephen  had  to  be  preserved.  All  other  parliaments,  coun- 
cils, and  large  deliberative  chambers  have  adopted  the  semi- 
circular form,  which  alone  enables  a  body  of  some  hundreds 
to  see  and  hear  each  other.  Half  the  waste  of  time,  obstruc- 
tion, disorder,  and  lounging  habits  of  the  House  of  Commons 
is  due  to  the  fact  that  members  have  no  places  of  their  own, 
no  room  to  sit,  cannot  be  got  into  the  House  all  together, 
and,  when  in  it,  can  sleep  on  the  back  benches  as  quietly  as 
in  their  own  libraries.  An  oblong  chamber  that  could  seat 
670  members  and  the  clerks  and  staff  would  only  increase 
the  difficulty  of  hearing,  the  noisy  ways,  and  the  opportunity 
of  slumbering  unseen.  If  the  House  of  Commons  often 
looks  like  a  club  smoking-room,  the  reason  is  that  it  has  to 
squeeze  itself  into  that  Procrustes  bed  —  the  palace  chapel 
of  the  Plantagenets. 

I  hesitate  to  suggest  how  great  a  reform  would  be  a  time 
limit  of  speeches.     Honourable  members  would  regard  that 


258  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

as  worse  than  sacrilege.  But  the  time  limit  for  speeches 
at  the  London  County  Council  has  worked  admirably.  It  is 
always  extended  by  a  vote  whenever  necessary.  It  never 
suppresses  any  serious  argument,  whilst  it  annihilates  bores. 
Speakers  avoid  verbiage  or  repetition.  The  House  listens 
to  speeches  which  cannot  last  long,  and  will  soon  be  answered 
from  the  other  side.  It  gives  life  and  point  to  every  debate. 
It  makes  obstruction  impossible.  If  in  the  last  Parliament 
there  had  been  a  time  limit  for  speeches,  the  late  Government 
would  have  been  beaten  a  dozen  times  over.  Even  Sir  A. 
Acland-Hood  could  not  have  found  relays  of  Bartleys  and 
Flannerys.  Twenty  minutes,  or  at  the  utmost  half  an  hour, 
is  enough  to  enable  the  average  speaker  to  say  what  he  has 
to  say.  Indeed,  it  is  very  often  found  to  be  more  than  enough. 
A  front  bench  speaker  or  the  spokesman  of  any  group  or 
cause  could  always  rely  on  the  courtesy  of  the  House  to  extend 
the  limit  on  good  cause  shown.  At  the  London  County 
Council  I  have  heard  the  time  limit  on  a  Budget  opening 
extended  four  successive  times  by  a  general  vote.  A  time 
limit  of  twenty  minutes  for  ordinary  speeches  would  do  more 
to  give  life  to  Parliament  and  to  reduce  desultory  habits 
than  any  other  single  form. 

I  abstain  from  touching  on  some  other  reforms,  trivial 
in  themselves,  but  highly  significant  and  not  unimportant. 
Official  costume,  court  dress,  swords  (swords  in  the  twentieth 
century  in  a  democratic  Parliament !) ,  all  this  is  a  silly  rem- 
nant of  extinct  manners,  and  now  even  a  cause  of  offence. 
There  are  now  at  least  150  members  to  whom  these  badges 
of  social  classification  are  both  ridiculous  and  odious.  The 
men  chosen  and  supported  by  barefoot  Irish  peasants  and 
by  British  miners,  spinners,  and  carpenters  cannot  afford 
these  clothes  and  accoutrements,  nor  would  they  consent  to 
appear  in  the  guise  of  Lord  Mayor's  footmen  or  actors  in 


PARLIAMENTARY    PROCEDURE  259 

the  School  for  Scandal.  The  age  has  outgrown  this  playing 
at  the  manners  of  Queen  Anne.  And  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, with  some  fifty  workmen,  eighty  Nationalists,  and  a 
score  or  two  more  of  men  who  were  not  bred  at  Eton  and 
Oxford,  and  do  not  attend  at  levees  or  "At  Homes,"  is  a 
very  different  place  from  that  in  which  members  required  a 
property  qualification,  and  where  Edmund  Burke  was  held 
unworthy  to  enter  a  Cabinet. 

We  all  trust  that,  with  the  scandalous  bonus  given  to  the 
rich  by  the  system  of  plural  voting,  there  will  disappear  also 
the  unjust  and  mischievous  practice  of  prolonging  a  general 
election  over  several  weeks.  As  in  other  countries,  elections 
should  be  held  throughout  the  four  nations  on  the  same  day, 
which  ought  to  be  made  a  bank  holiday.  I  would  also 
prohibit  the  use  of  motors  and  carriages,  unless  actually 
occupied  by  their  owner  or  his  agents.  The  lavish  use  of 
vehicles  to  carry  electors  to  the  poll  is  a  very  squalid  kind  of 
bribery  which  ought  to  be  suppressed  like  "treating"  and 
"hired  vehicles."  We  need  not  labour  the  payment  of  all 
bona  fide  election  expenses  with  the  House  and  the  Govern- 
ment we  now  have  secured.  The  antique  paraphernalia  of 
writs,  returns,  re-election  on  taking  office,  "swearing-in," 
and  other  mummery,  will  have  to  go.  Nothing  should 
prevent  the  Dissolution  of  Parliament  by  Royal  Proclama- 
tion, and  the  holding  of  a  general  election  on  one  given  day, 
at  any  convenient  day  at  a  future  and  reasonable  date.  The 
mediaeval  rules  about  dissolutions  and  elections,  with  the 
obsolete  jealousy  of  the  Crown  which  forces  both  into  one 
Royal  Proclamation,  cause  nothing  but  trouble  and  serve 
no  useful  end.  The  superstition  that  the  British  Constitu- 
tion, like  Nature,  "abhors  a  vacuum,"  and  insists  on  the 
formula  —  Le  Parlement  est  mort  —  Vive  le  Parlement !  — 
is  hardly  worthy  of  the  twentieth  century. 


260  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

The  twentieth  century  is  here.  The  new  democratic 
Parliament  is  also  here.  And  500  Liberal,  Labour,  and 
Nationalist  M.P.'s  will  have  to  conform  their  practice  to  the 
new  conditions,  or  the  nation,  at  last  roused  to  assert  itself, 
"will  know  the  reason  why." 


PART    II 

LITERATURE   AND   ART 


THE   USES   OF  RICH   MEN 

(From  "The  Forum"  N.Y.,  1893) 

Why  do  we  not  make  a  better  use  of  our  rich  men?  We 
waste  them,  and  let  them  run  to  seed  anyhow,  a  burden  to 
themselves  and  a  nuisance  to  the  public.  We  ought  to  utilise 
them,  and  make  citizens  of  them,  lifting  them  from  their 
condition  of  ineptitude  and  degradation  to  become  respect- 
able members  of  the  commonwealth.  Like  the  tides,  the 
sun,  or  the  negro  race,  they  could  do  a  great  deal  of  useful 
work,  if  they  were  properly  turned  to  it.  As  it  is,  we  let 
their  vast  motive  power  run  to  waste,  like  the  waters  at 
Niagara,  in  noise  and  foam. 

They  are  not  bad  fellows  —  at  least  not  all  of  them. 
Many  of  them  are  really  anxious  to  do  something,  and  to 
become  decent  citizens.  They  bore  themselves  intolerably; 
and  are  grateful  to  any  one  who  will  show  them  how  they 
can  do  something  that  men  will  care  for,  or  how  to  spend  their 
money  in  ways  that  cannot  be  called  either  selfish  or  mean. 
Many  a  man  who  has  inherited  millions  is  gnawed  with  envy 
as  he  watches  a  practical  man  turning  an  honest  penny. 
How  he  would  like  to  earn  an  honest  penny  !  He  never  did : 
he  never  will ;  and  he  feels  like  a  dyspeptic  invalid  watching 
a  hearty  beggar  enjoying  a  bone  or  a  crust. 

Many  a  rich  man  is  capable  of  better  things;  but  he  does 
not  know  how  to  begin.     The  one  thing  that  his  wealth 

263 


264  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

cannot  buy  is  —  an  appetite,  the  zest  for  useful  work,  the 
consciousness  of  being  a  worker  in  the  hive,  and  not  a  drone. 
A  Parisian  viveur,  whose  dinner  occupied  him  three  hours 
each  night  at  Bignon's,  was  once  watching  sadly  a  young 
English  tourist  eating  his  first  square  meal  after  six  weeks' 
climbing  in  the  Alps.  "Ah!"  said  the  epicure  with  a  sigh, 
"  if  one  could  only  sit  down  to  pate  de  foie  gras  with  a  moun- 
tain appetite !"  But  that  is  their  mistake.  It  is  the  toujour s 
perdix  —  toujour s  pate  de  foie  gras  —  which  robs  them  of 
appetite,  of  zest,  of  the  love  of  work.  But  it  is  not  too  late. 
Much  may  be  done  by  a  proper  regimen.  And  I  propose  to 
show  that  there  are  still  ways  in  which  a  rich  man  —  even  a 
very  rich  man  —  may  yet  become  useful  and  happy. 

The  ancients  managed  this  matter  much  better  than  we 
do.  At  Athens  and  in  many  other  Greek  republics  there 
was  a  remarkable  institution  known  as  the  Aeirovpyiai, 
Liturgies,  that  is,  public  services  of  rich  men.  In  Christian 
times  the  word  became  limited  to  a  religious  service,  or  public 
worship ;  and  hence  the  word  Liturgy  now  means  a  form  of 
congregational  prayer,  or  ritual  of  divine  service.  But  in 
ancient  times,  and  originally,  the  word  and  the  thing  had  a 
far  wider  meaning.  And  we  might  learn  a  useful  lesson  by 
restoring  the  ancient  republican  Liturgy,  or  costly  public 
service  offered  to  the  State  by  rich  men. 

At  Athens  the  Liturgies  were  legal  and  constitutional 
offices,  imposed  periodically  and  according  to  a  regular 
order,  by  each  local  community  on  citizens  rated  as  having 
a  capital  of  more  than  a  given  amount.  They  were  special 
taxes  on  the  conspicuous  rich  men,  originally  imposed  as  the 
equivalent  of  peculiar  privileges  and  rights;  just  as  a  feudal 
barony,  with  its  powers  and  revenues,  implied  the  obligation 
of  military  and  civil  service  and  the  maintenance  of  an  armed 
force,  police,  and  justice.     But  when  democratic  equality 


THE   USES   OF   RICH   MEN  265 

was  established  at  Athens,  the  special  taxation  of  the  rich 
was  maintained  and  largely  increased. 

It  was  not  a  simple  tax ;  it  was  not  unpopular ;  it  was  no 
sordid  affair  of  money.  It  always  remained  a  public  service, 
an  honorary  distinction,  a  coveted  office,  a  duty  to  be  filled 
by  taste,  skill,  personal  effort,  and  public  spirit.  Rich  men 
contended  for  the  office,  greatly  exceeded  their  legal  liability, 
often  ruined  themselves  in  their  zeal,  and  sometimes  gained 
so  dangerous  an  influence  by  their  magnificence,  that  Aristotle 
in  his  Politics  warns  the  democracies  of  the  risk.  But  much 
of  the  artistic  and  intellectual  pre-eminence  of  Athens  was 
due  to  this  favourite  institution'.  We  have  suffered  this  noble 
custom  to  die  out.  We  leave  our  millionaires  in  their  sordid 
impotence.  Financial  reformers  talk  big  about  a  mere 
mechanical  progressive  income-tax.  Mr.  Joseph  Chamber- 
lain made  some  brave  speeches  about  "Ransom."  But  the 
true  ransom  is  the  revival  of  that  noble  republican  institu- 
tion, the  Liturgies  of  the  Rich. 

The  Athenian  Liturgies  were  for  very  varied  purposes. 
As  magistrates  and  ministers  certain  men  of  wealth  were 
charged  with  the  cost  and  production  of  the  public  dramas, 
choruses,  processions,  games,  embassies,  and  feasts.  In 
time  of  war,  they  were  called  on  to  man  and  arm  a  ship  for 
the  fleet.  But  almost  the  whole  of  the  public  amusements, 
religious  and  artistic  ceremonies,  were  provided  freely  for 
the  people  at  the  cost  and  by  the  personal  efforts  of  selected 
men  of  wealth.  We  owe  the  tragedies  and  comedies  of  the 
great  poets  to  the  munificence  of  these  wealthy  patrons. 
The  temples,  statues,  and  monuments  with  which  Athens 
was  crowded  were  mainly  the  gifts  of  public  benefactors. 
One  street  was  named  from  the  tripods  which  the  Choragi 
had  won  as  prizes  for  success  in  their  Liturgy,  and  the  lovely 
monument  of  Lvsicrates  was  dedicated  to  enshrine  such  a 


266  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

prize.  The  legal  institution  developed  into  an  honoured 
custom,  whereby  the  chief  ambition  of  a  rich  man  came  to 
be  that  of  making  splendid  gifts  to  his  fellow-citizens. 

Theatres,  race-courses,  temples,  baths,  aqueducts,  gardens, 
libraries,  academies,  colonnades,  pictures,  statues,  books, 
and  museums  —  all  were  showered  upon  favoured  cities  by 
wealthy  men  who  possessed  or  who  coveted  the  name  of  a 
citizen.  Herodes  Atticus  was  no  hero:  but  to  this  day  the 
traveller  at  Athens  is  reminded  of  the  public  spirit  of  old 
times  by  the  stupendous  remains  of  his  gifts  to  his  native 
city  —  perhaps  the  most  lavish  munificence  of  a  private 
person  recorded  in  history.  Twenty  millions  to-day  would 
not  suffice  to  pay  for  the  public  works  which  were  presented 
to  Greece  by  this  very  useful  rich  man.  The  Romans  car- 
ried out  the  system  of  Liturgies  on  a  scale  even  vaster,  but  in 
a  spirit  far  less  pure.  With  the  Romans  it  was  not  so  much 
honour  as  ambition  which  suggested  their  munificence;  rich 
men  sought  power  rather  than  immortality;  they  gave 
gladiatorial  shows  and  baths,  rather  than  libraries  and 
tragedies.  In  Mediaeval  times,  public  munificence  was 
confined  to  churches  and  religious  offerings.  It  is  the 
artistic  Liturgy  of  republican  Athens  which  we  should  seek 
to  restore. 

In  this  matter  the  United  States  are  far  ahead  of  the  rest 
of  the  civilised  world;  but,  even  in  America,  the  practice  is 
quite  in  its  infancy.  Prominent  citizens  in  some  of  the  most 
advanced  States  have  made  to  the  public  splendid  gifts  of 
libraries,  museums,  and  colleges.  It  is  an  excellent  beginning 
which  has  shown  the  Old  World  the  virtue  of  the  republican 
spirit.  In  Europe  there  is  as  yet  but  little  of  the  kind.  In 
England,  mainly  in  the  Midlands  and  in  the  North,  something 
has  been  done  —  but  exclusively  by  traders  and  men  of 
business.     The  way  has  been  shown  by  Anglo-Americans, 


THE   USES   OF   RICH   MEN  267 

such  as  Mr.  Peabody  and  Mr.  Carnegie.  We  have  our 
Masons  and  our  Edwardses.  Once  or  twice  a  rich  trades- 
man or  a  manufacturer  has  presented  the  nation  or  his  native 
town  with  a  collection  of  pictures,  a  museum,  a  library,  a 
college,  or  even  a  park.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  these  noble 
examples  of  public  spirit  have  been  given  amongst  us  almost 
without  exception  by  obscure  middle-class  men,  whose  wealth 
no  man  suspected,  whose  generosity  was  a  surprise  even  to 
their  neighbours,  and  whose  munificence  is  usually  accepted 
with  a  chilly  and  even  ungracious  civility. 

The  class  which  is  most  conspicuously  wanting  in  this 
form  of  public  spirit  is  the  most  conspicuous  class  now  extant 
as  a  class  in  the  whole  world  —  the  English  aristocracy  of 
hereditary  wealth.  Of  all  rich  men  they  are  the  only  power- 
ful order  which,  outside  their  own  estates,  never  give  the  pub- 
lic anything  —  except  their  formal  subscriptions  to  hospitals 
and  the  like.  In  the  way  of  munificence  —  nothing.  One 
can  hardly  recall  a  single  instance  of  a  great  peer  or  great 
landowner  giving  the  public  anything  from  their  millions. 
Their  idea  of  public  munificence  is  to  display  their  splendid 
selves.  Their  noble  example  to  the  people  is  to  exhibit 
their  own  luxury  and  extravagance.  The  only  form  of 
Liturgy  they  recognise  is  the  admission  of  the  people  to 
witness  the  stateliness  of  their  own  lives.  They  build  palaces 
—  to  live  in  themselves;  they  have  parks,  picture-galleries, 
libraries,  and  collections,  which  they  keep  up  rather  for  pride 
than  for  any  personal  pleasure  in  them ;  and  which  the  public 
are  admitted  to  stare  at  one  day  in  the  week  (when  the  family 
are  away)  at  half-a-crown  a  head. 

No  doubt,  the  obsolete  law  of  entail,  and  the  obsolescent 
tradition  of  "keeping  up  the  family  place,"  account  for 
much  of  this.  They  devote  large  sums,  it  is  true,  to  improve 
and  develop  their  estates.     But  they  often  inherit  enormous 


268  REALITIES    AND   IDEALS 

fortunes  in  other  forms,  and  marriage,  minorities,  and  the 
growth  of  towns,  from  time  to  time  throw  into  their  laps  heaps 
of  ready  money.  All  this  goes  in  race-horses,  yachts,  orchids, 
deer-forests,  and  entertainments  —  but  not  one  penny  to  the 
public.  The  public  are  allowed  to  look  on  from  a  proper 
distance.  They  can  see  the  horses  race,  the  yachts  sail; 
they  may  not  look  at  the  orchids  or  the  deer,  but,  when  a 
concert  or  ball  is  given,  they  may  stand  in  the  gutter  and 
watch  the  carriages  drive  up  to  the  choragus'  door.  This 
sublime  self-devotion  of  the  rich  aristocrat  is  imitated  from 
the  royal  caste.  In  ancient  times  kings  and  emperors  every- 
where made  splendid  gifts  to  the  people,  and  almost  the  whole 
of  the  public  enjoyments  in  the  Roman  Empire  were  pre- 
sented by  the  Caesars,  their  family,  ministers,  or  officials. 
Now,  kings  and  emperors  receive  —  even  tout  for  —  presents, 
but  never  give.  The  aristocrats  are  only  too  ready  to  learn 
the  new  version  of  noblesse  oblige.  They  give  only  to  them- 
selves. It  is  treat  enough  for  the  public  to  be  suffered  to 
see  them  enjoying  themselves. 

America  shows  us  examples  of  a  very  different  spirit. 
There  are  plenty  of  towns  in  the  United  States  which  are 
crowded  with  buildings  and  institutions  freely  presented  by 
rich  citizens  to  the  public.  America  is  fortunate  in  never 
having  known  on  its  soil  the  poisonous  seed  of  feudal  entail 
and  privileged  orders.  Nor  is  the  American  people  so  eager 
as  are  the  vulgar  in  Europe  to  gaze  at  a  luxury  which  they 
are  not  allowed  to  share.  When  rich  men  in  America 
squander  fortunes  on  themselves,  they  have  little  opportunity 
for  personal  ostentation  or  feudal  pomp;  and  they  can 
hardly  persuade  themselves  that  their  extravagance  is  a 
civic  duty  and  a  public  boon,  as  princes  and  nobles  in  Europe 
are  taught  to  do.  But  even  in  America  there  is  much  to  be 
done  to  show  the  social  justification  of  great  wealth.     The 


THE   USES   OF   RICH   MEN  269 

donors  of  libraries,  museums,  and  colleges,  do  not  come  as  a 
rule  from  the  ranks  of  the  most  conspicuous  millionaires, 
and  the  proverbial  "gold-bugs"  are  often  conspicuous  for 
their  absence  from  the  noble  roll  of  public  benefactors. 
We  are  told  in  Europe  that  these  gilded  coleoptera  are  dying 
of  ennui  and  auriferous  plethora.  Why  do  they  not  show 
their  fellow-citizens  how  to  form  a  grand  gallery  of  art, 
how  to  create  a  high-class  theatre,  how  to  found  a  great 
scientific  museum? 

There  is  almost  no  limit  to  the  forms  in  which  rich  men 
could  be  of  use  if  they  tried,  and  to  the  public  benefactions 
they  could  confer  if  they  put  their  minds  to  it.  Such  grand 
institutions  as  the  Cooper  Institute  or  the  Lick  Observatory 
are  an  honour  to  the  people  amongst  whom  such  splendid 
examples  of  public  spirit  are  common.  But  let  us  say  a  word 
for  that  rarer  form  of  munificence  which  we  saw  to  be  estab- 
lished as  a  regular  system  at  Athens.  That  is  the  artistic 
rather  than  the  scientific  or  educational  form  of  public 
endowments.  We  need  hardly  say  more  as  to  the  vast  service 
to  the  community  conferred  by  the  foundation  of  a  library 
or  a  college.  It  is  obvious  and  familiar.  Words  can  make 
it  no  clearer,  nor  could  they  heighten  the  public  sense  of 
benefit.  The  artistic  benefaction  is  not  so  familiar,  and  is 
more  in  need  of  recommendation  and  encouragement.  No 
millionaire  ever  seems  to  think  of  giving  his  fellow-citizens 
a  series  of  free  musical  entertainments,  a  historic  pageant, 
much  less  a  free  dramatic jjgrjormance^.  3  :*^/u*i^vv^  ' 

All  the  great  dramas  of  antiquity,  the  tragedies  of  ^Eschylus 
and  Sophocles,  the  comedies  of  Aristophanes  and  Menander, 
the  lyric  choruses,  the  sacred  dances,  and  processional 
festivals,  were  all  without  exception  the  gifts  of  rich  men  to 
their  fellow-citizens;  no  man  bought  his  seat,  no  man  was 
shut  out,  no  one  was  expected  to  contribute.     When  /Eschvlus 


270  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

vanquished  Phrynichus,  or  Sophocles  won  the  prize  from 
Euripides,  the  victory  was  decided  not  by  the  money  taken  at 
the  doors,  nor  by  the  number  of  nights  that  the  (Edipus  was 
"run,"  but  by  the  voice  of  trained  judges.  And  the  rich 
choragus,  who  had  lavished  his  wealth  in  mounting  the 
Prometheus  or  the  Antigone,  was  amply  repaid  by  the  honour 
of  having  shown  the  public  a  masterpiece  in  a  worthy  setting. 
The  tripod  he  carried  home  on  success  (the  very  bill  for 
which  was  included  in  his  outlay)  remained  as  a  sacred 
heirloom  to  his  descendants. 

There  are  certain  forms  of  art-culture  which  no  state  and 
no  municipality,  however  rich  and  liberal,  can  ever  provide 
for  itself  out  of  its  public  revenues.  Town  halls,  senate 
houses,  public  offices,  even  libraries  and  museums,  may  be 
raised  out  of  public  funds  by  popular  vote.  But  reasonable 
economy,  or  at  least  strict  business  value  for  the  sums  voted, 
will  be,  and  ought  to  be,  considered.  The  highest  forms  of 
art,  which  it  is  the  duty  of  the  best  civilisation  to  present 
as  types  to  all  citizens,  have  no  market  price  at  all.  They 
are  above  price;  and,  in  order  to  produce  their  moral  and 
social  effects,  they  ought  to  be  treated  as  outside  of  all  eco- 
nomical conditions.  How  is  a  state  or  a  town  to  obtain  a 
collection  of  ancient  masters,  of  priceless  Raffaelles  and 
Titians  ?  Where  is  it  to  buy  a  Louvre  or  a  Vatican  ?  Who 
would  vote  the  people's  money  to  make  another  Versailles? 
Good  or  bad,  the  palaces,  picture  galleries,  collections  of 
antiquities,  gardens  and  parks  of  Europe,  have  been  created 
by  princes  and  by  them  ceded  to  the  State.  The  age  of 
princes  is  practically  over  in  the  West,  where  they  retain  here 
and  there  the  form  and  style  of  sovereignty,  but  nowhere  its 
real  functions  and  powers.  But  the  age  of  rich  men  is  not 
at  all  over.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  richer  than  ever,  and 
the  means  of  providing  the  public  with  splendid  art  and  noble 


THE   USES   OF   RICH   MEN  27 1 

enjoyments  has  passed  from  princes  into  the  hands  of  mill- 
ionaires.    The  millionaires  have  the  means  ;  and  they  alone 
have  it ;  but  as  yet  they  miserably  fail  to  recognise  their  part. 
The  day  may  come  when  the  world  will  have  agreed  to 
abolish  rich  men  altogether  as  an  obsolete  institution.     And 
certainly  no  anarchist  or  communist  is  working  so  desperately 
to  hurry  on  that  day  as  are  the  rich  men  themselves.     The 
day,  too,  may  come  when  the  people  will  have  so  much  taste, 
public  spirit,  and  passion  for  the  beautiful,  that  they  will  be 
ready  to  lavish  their  public  revenues  on  artistic  masterpieces. 
Something  of  the  kind  may  be  observed  in  France,   and 
perhaps  in  Italy.     In  France  it  is  understood  that  the  State 
and  the  municipalities  will  buy  pictures,  statues,  gardens, 
galleries,  and  fountains  with  a  free  hand  out  of  the  people's 
taxes,  and  will  build  palaces  and  halls,  subvention  theatres, 
and  provide  splendid  spectacles  for  the  people  from  national 
and  civic  funds.     The  result  is  that,  in  France,  no  private 
person  ever  gives  the  public  anything,  and  that  public  money 
is  spent  on  works  of  art  with  what  would  be  called  wanton 
extravagance  in  England  and  America.     Here,  and  generally 
amongst  a  Protestant  race  of  Saxon  origin,  it  is  not  our  way 
to  provide  beautiful  things  out  of  public  money  with  that 
princely  magnificence  which  many  beautiful  things  require. 
An  English-speaking  race  is  economical,  business-like,  and 
jealous  of  anything  like  aesthetic  extravagance.     Nay,  the 
strong  Puritan  element  in  English  and  American  communities 
has  stirrings  of  conscience  against  any  form  of  art  but  that 
which  is  very  narrow  and  quite  conventional.     It  is  hopeless 
to  expect  that,  for  many  a  long  day,  the  higher  forms  of  art 
will  be  adequately  provided  for  the  people  in  any  English- 
speaking  country  by  public  funds  voted  by  popular  bodies. 
Here  is  the  chance  for  rich  men  to  cut  in  and  supply  a 
"felt  want."     For  the  present  at  any  rate,  we  have  got  the 


272  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

rich  men,  and  a  field  lies  open  to  their  energies,  in  which  no 
competition  is  possible.  English  and  American  tax-payers 
will  not  pay  the  sums  required  by  the  truly  noble  forms  of 
art.  Art  for  the  people  is  accordingly  driven  by  the  compe- 
tition of  the  market  to  its  more  vulgar  forms ;  and  the  civili- 
sation of  the  age  is  pro  tanto  debased.  The  role  of  the  rich 
man  is  to  show  his  fellow-citizens  what  taste,  energy,  and 
generosity  can  do.  The  Midases  of  the  railway  and  money 
"hells"  are  not  supposed  to  possess  any  quality  of  these  three 
but  the  second.  But  the  men  of  hereditary  wealth  in  Eng- 
land claim  to  have  a  monopoly  of  the  first,  if  not  of  the  third ; 
and  there  is  now  in  America  a  large  order  of  men  having 
inherited  fortunes  who  value  themselves  on  a  culture  and 
refinement  quite  unique  and  incommunicable.  We  are  told 
that  the  old  Faubourg  St.  Germain  and  the  historic  prin- 
cipii  of  Rome  do  not  furnish  an  order  more  plainly  superior  to 
their  fellow-citizens  and  more  cruelly  condemned  to  enforced 
indolence  by  the  impossibility  of  entering  the  vulgar  turmoil 
of  "politics."  Here  then  is  a  career  of  public  usefulness 
marked  out  for  the  American  citizen  who  combines  in  him- 
self wealth,  leisure,  and  the  higher  culture. 

The  only  chance  of  a  really  great  and  elevating  theatre 
is  to  carry  it  on  without  regard  to  direct  profit.  Recently 
Lord  Tennyson's  Foresters  was  tried  in  London  but  found 
no  public  encouragement.  Regarded  as  a  "woodland 
masque"  and  nothing  more,  it  was  sufficiently  dramatic 
to  sustain  the  lyrical  poetry,  bright  music,  and  graceful 
tableaux  of  the  piece.  Though  not  a  stirring  play,  it  was  a 
work  of  art  as  a  lyrical  interlude.  But  the  British  public 
would  have  none  of  it,  preferring  any  rowdy  nonsense  or 
vapid  melodrama.  In  Paris  the  principal  theatres  are  under 
State  patronage  and  have  public  subventions.  That  is  out 
of  the  question  in  England  or  America.     No  great  historic 


THE    USES   OF   RICH   MEN  273 

theatre  was  ever  long  maintained  in  its  perfection  on  strict 
commercial  lines.  The  day  may  come  when  the  public  will 
pay  the  value  of  a  truly  beautiful  creation ;  but  the  day  is 
far  off.  The  world  would  never  have  had  the  Agamemnon 
and  the  (Edipus,  the  Birds,  and  the  Clouds,  if  the  citizens  of 
Athens  had  had  to  pay  ten  drachmas  for  a  seat,  and  if  /Es- 
chylus  and  Sophocles  had  had  to  watch  the  till  anxiously 
every  night.  But  the  same  principle  holds  good  of  music, 
the  opera,  the  orchestra  of  every  kind.  All  the  great  in- 
strumental pieces  of  Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  and  Wag- 
ner were  aided  by  wealthy  patronage ;  and  they  would  never 
have  been  produced  at  all,  if  they  had  solely  depended  on  the 
money  taken  at  the  doors.  It  was  a  very  bad  form  of  patron- 
age, full  of  evils  and  humiliations  of  its  own.  Xo  one  would 
wish  to  revive  such  a  system;  and  indeed  it  never  can  be 
revived.  The  age  of  the  Waldsteins,  Lobkowitzes,  and 
Prince  Archbishops  has  passed  awray.  But  the  general  rule 
holds  good.  The  greatest  things  in  music  have  never  been 
produced  on  mere  commercial  lines.  And  they  are  even  less 
likely  to  be  produced  now. 

Music,  the  drama,  with  all  other  art,  having  been  handed 
over  to  the  entrepreneur  and  the  competition  of  the  market, 
tempting  profits  have  been  offered  to  the  artist,  but  only 
under  conditions  which  tend  to  lower  the  art.  A  brilliant 
musical  performer  may  make  a  rapid  fortune,  but  only  on 
condition  of  singing  or  playing  in  a  hall  so  large  that  no  one 
can  hear  him  properly,  whilst  his  performance  tends  more 
and  more  to  display  and  not  to  art,  and  so  that  he  is  worked 
like  a  crack  race-horse  and  boomed  like  a  quack  pill.  A 
famous  tragedian  is  expected  to  run  round  the  world  exhibit- 
ing himself  to  audiences  without  a  grain  of  training  or  judg- 
ment, who  go  to  see  him  in  the  same  spirit  that  they  go  to 
see  a  dwarf  or  a  woolly  horse.     Monster  concerts,  leviathan 

T 


2  74  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

programmes,  one  man  on  one  instrument  performing  for 
four  hours  to  an  audience  of  ten  thousand  persons ;  a  woman 
singing  show  pieces  to  thirty  thousand  people  in  an  iron  shed ; 
professional  puffery;  the  "star"  playing  with  a  company  of 
walking  dummies  —  are  the  inevitable  result  of  the  com- 
mercial system.  It  ruins  the  artist  and  degrades  the  art. 
In  the  course  of  thirty  years  I  have  watched  how  many  of 
the  finest  artists  in  Europe  have  gone  all  to  pieces  after  a 
tour  round  the  world.  Their  methods  before  and  after  a 
successful  tour  are  as  much  contrasted  as  the  signatures  of 
Guido  Fawkes  "before  and  after  torture."  Unhappily,  it 
is  not  only  they  but  their  art  which  has  gone  to  pieces.  The 
profits  and  the  business  of  the  artist  have  been  put  upon 
such  a  footing  that,  if  art  is  to  pay  at  all,  it  has  to  submit  to 
the  manager's  conditions;  and  these  are  necessarily  such  as 
are  the  ruin  of  high  art. 

In  this  dilemma  our  only  resource  is  the  rich  man  —  the 
man  who  combines  wealth,  judgment,  taste,  and  public 
spirit.  He  must  put  aside  the  bad  and  vulgar  ways  of  the 
old-fashioned  patron,  who  patronised  for  his  own  enjoy- 
ment or  more  usually  from  pride.  There  could  not  be  a 
better  model  than  the  Athenian  choragus  of  the  best  period, 
who  was  himself  keenly  ambitious  of  the  prize  of  public 
honour,  who  looked  upon  himself  as  the  business  manager 
of  the  artist  for  the  love  of  the  art,  and  felt  the  same  interest 
in  his  success  as  the  squire  took  in  the  victory  of  the  knight 
in  the  lists.  It  is  not  necessary  to  add  that,  of  course,  the 
legal  obligation  of  the  old  republican  Liturgy  is  not  a  thing 
to  be  revived  in  our  age.  If  wealth  is  ever  specially  taxed 
in  our  times,  it  will  be  for  all  public  purposes  and  not  for 
incidental  purposes  of  art.  Until  we  recover  the  art  passion 
which  animated  Athenians  in  their  glorious  times,  we  could 
hardly  expect  that  a  class-tax  imposed  by  law  would  be 


THE    USES    OF    RICH    MEN  275 

popular.  But  there  is  all  the  more  reason  for  voluntary 
discharge  of  these  honourable  duties. 

There  has  hardly  ever  been  an  age  when  less  is  offered 
to  the  public  in  this  form  than  is  the  custom  in  our  own  age. 
During  the  whole  of  antiquity  the  entire  art  education  of 
the  people  and  their  amusements,  spectacles,  and  luxuries, 
were  provided  for  them  freely  by  the  wealthy.  During  the 
whole  of  the  Mediaeval  period,  vast  resources  were  spent  for 
the  public  benefit  in  the  way  of  churches,  religious  offerings, 
ecclesiastical  and  academic  endowments.  The  cathedrals, 
minsters,  churches,  were  the  gifts  of  the  rich,  and  were  them- 
selves free  museums,  galleries  of  art,  musical  halls,  and 
even  theatres.  When  the  Mediaeval  world  ended,  much 
was  done  of  the  same  kind,  but  in  less  noble  and  munificent 
ways,  by  the  kings,  princes,  courtiers,  and  grandees.  In 
our  age  the  possessors  of  hereditary  wealth  are  mostly  in- 
clined to  spend  it  on  themselves  and  their  personal  friends. 
Conspicuous  examples  of  public  munificence  are  left  to 
obscure  workers  whose  noble  public  spirit  too  often  raises 
something  akin  to  a  sneer  from  the  toadies  of  the  great. 

At  the  end  of  my  homily  on  "Liturgies"  I  am  not  about 
to  enter  at  length  on  the  question  —  Why  should  the  rich 
make  gifts  to  the  public  at  all?  This  is  a  very  wide  and 
deep  question  which  might  carry  us  very  far.  It  is  enough 
for  my  present  purpose  to  show  that  it  has  been  recognised 
as  a  social,  moral,  and  religious  duty  in  all  civilised  times, 
and  that  it  is  still  recognised  in  theory  and  from  time  to  time 
practised  in  a  way  by  many.  The  old  republican  conception 
of  society  was  saturated  with  this  principle  as  the  antidote 
and  compensation  of  glaring  inequality  amongst  citizens. 
The  Christian  religion  took  it  up  as  the  corner-stone  of 
its  practice.  The  churches  were  incessantly  repeating  how 
God  loveth  a  cheerful  giver,  and  charged  the  rich  that  they 


276  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

be  ready  to  give.  Unhappily,  this  excellent  advice  took  a 
very  narrow  and  inadequate  form,  and  has  in  our  days  been 
interpreted  to  mean  a  modest  subscription  to  a  church,  hos- 
pital, or  blanket  club.  And  now,  when  the  fervour  of 
Christian  charity  is  waning,  and  the  zeal  of  giving  half  one's 
goods  like  Zaccheus  is  abated,  there  are  very  many  rich 
men  who  never  give  at  all,  except  what  fashion  dictates, 
and  who  entirely  ignore  the  social  obligation  imposed  on 
them  by  great  wealth.  Princes  and  grandees  are  more  or 
less  passing  away  as  a  social  institution.  The  rich  have 
succeeded  to  their  powers;  and  they  must  remember  that 
they  have  succeeded  to  their  obligations. 

My  own  creed,  on  which  this  is  not  the  time  or  place  to 
enlarge,  teaches  me  that  in  our  industrial  age  all  wealth  is 
really  the  product  of  thousands  working  together  in  ways 
of  which  they  are  not  conscious,  and  with  complex  and 
subtle  relations  that  no  analysis  can  apportion.  The  rich 
man  is  simply  the  man  who  has  managed  to  put  himself  at 
the  end  of  the  long  chain,  or  into  the  centre  of  an  intricate 
convolution,  and  whom  society  and  law  suffer  to  retain  the 
joint  product  conditionally;  partly  because  it  is  impossible 
to  apportion  the  just  shares  of  the  co-operators,  and  partly 
because  it  is  the  common  interest  that  the  product  should 
be  kept  in  a  mass  and  freely  used  for  the  public  good.  But 
this  personal  appropriation  of  wealth  is  a  social  convention, 
and  purely  conditional  on  its  proving  to  be  convenient.  The 
great  problem  which  the  twentieth  century  will  have  seriously 
to  take  in  hand  and  finally  solve  is  this :  —  Are  rich  men 
likely  to  prove  of  any  real  social  use  —  or  will  it  be  better 
for  society  to  abolish  the  institution?  For  my  own  part,  I 
see  many  ways  in  which  they  can  be  of  use,  and  I  earnestly 
invite  them  to  convince  the  public  of  this  before  it  is  too 
late. 


THE    USES    OF    RICH    MEN  277 

P.S.  1908.  —  The  fifteen  years  that  have  passed  since  this 
was  written  have  given  us,  both  in  Britain  and  in  America, 
many  splendid  examples  of  the  spirit  described  in  this  essay. 
They  are  too  conspicuous  to  need  naming  —  but  alas !  as 
yet  they  are  found  only  amongst  the  captains  of  industry  — 
those  who  have  personally  created  capital,  not  amongst  those 
who  have  inherited  great  wealth. 


II 

THE   REVIVAL   OF  THE   DRAMA 

(From  "The  Forum"  N.Y.,  1893) 

In  that  most  fascinating  of  biographies  —  Moore's  Life  and 
Letters  of  Lord  Byron  —  we  read  how  the  poet,  then  in  the 
zenith  of  his  powers,  having  exhausted  every  known  sensa- 
tion, was  thrown  into  dangerous  convulsions  by  witnessing 
Alfieri's  Mirra,  in  company  with  his  beloved  Guiccioli.  The 
attack  was  so  severe  that  he  felt  the  effects  for  a  fortnight. 
He  had  a  similar  fit  when  some  years  earlier  he  saw  Kean 
as  Sir  Giles  Overreach.  Byron,  with  all  his  faults,  was  not 
a  nincompoop;  he  valued  himself,  and  with  good  reason, 
on  his  personal  nerve.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the 
seizure  was  genuine  and  uncontrollable,  and  it  remains  a 
signal  instance  of  the  power  of  great  acting  over  a  poetic 
nature.  This  power  has  been  felt  in  all  ages  with  varying 
intensity,  though  perhaps  it  is  rather  at  an  ebb  in  our  own. 
And  that,  in  spite  of  the  greatly  revived  interest  we  all  now 
take  in  the  stage,  and  the  great  amount  of  money,  thought, 
and  learning  which  is  devoted  to  the  theatre  both  in  Britain 
and  in  America. 

It  is  incontestable  that  our  stage,  as  a  whole,  exhibits  far 
higher  standards  of  cultivation  than  did  that  of  our  fathers 
in  the  'Forties.  Those  who  can  remember  the  English 
theatre  of  that  time  may  wonder  how  they  ever  could  sit 
out  in  patience  the  historical  play,  the  "genteel"  comedy, 
and  the  second-class  melodrama  of  that  epoch.     The  farces 

278 


THE   REVIVAL   OF   THE   DRAMA  279 

were  good  —  very  good :  there  were  in  Europe  one  or  two 
consummate  actors :  and  there  was  still  surviving  an  experi- 
enced body  of  old  play-goers  who  had  seen  the  grandest  act- 
ing of  modern  times.  But  the  mise-en-scene ,  the  attempt  at 
historic  setting,  the  "supers"  and  chorus,  walking-gentlemen, 
lords  and  ladies,  —  all  these  were  too  painful  to  look  upon. 

When  we  read  the  Life  of  Dickens,  Macready's  Memoirs, 
Charlotte  Bronte's  picture  of  Queen  Vashti,  or  George  H. 
Lewis'  sensible  little  book  on  Acting,  we  get  some  sense  of 
the  relations  of  literature  and  the  stage  in  the  'Forties,  some 
idea  of  that  tragic  delirium  which  threw  a  great  poet  into 
convulsions  in  the  generation  preceding.  But  sixty  years 
ago  there  were  educated  people  outside  Islington  who  told 
you  that  Phelps'  Macbeth  was  grand,  who  believed  firmly 
in  Charles  Kean's  "revivals,"  in  Gustavus  Vasa  Brooks 
Richard  III.,  and  who  never  flinched  under  the  cockney 
vulgarisms  and  the  Tom-and-Jerry  swagger  of  the  "cour- 
tiers," the  "Honourable  Chawleses"  and  the  Lord  Veri- 
sophts,  presenting  what  we  were  assured  were  the  manners 
of  high  life.  It  makes  one  hot  to  remember  what  we  could 
sit  through  in  our  raw  youth.  Certainly  they  do  far  better 
now. 

In  the  first  place,  the  local  and  historical  setting  of  a 
high-class  play  is  now  often  a  thing  to  enjoy  and  even  to 
study.  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  Hamlet,  Henry  VIII., 
and  a  score  of  Mr.  Irving's  pieces,  have  been  a  true  pleasure 
to  witness,  supposing  them  to  be  mere  tableaux  without 
words.  The  stage  at  the  Lyceum  is  too  crowded,  —  the 
sense  of  wanton  costliness  in  the  costumes  is  unpleasant,  and 
—  and  —  but  I  will  not  finish  the  sentence  — .  Still,  the 
general  effect  was  that  of  a  beautiful  picture,  regarded 
simply  as  a  scene,  and  moreover  of  a  true,  consistent,  and 
fairly  accurate  revival  of  a  striking  historic  panorama. 


280  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

This  is,  I  believe,  the  main  achievement  of  our  genera- 
tion in  the  improvement  of  the  stage.  Costumes,  scenery, 
groupings,  accessories,  are  real  works  of  art  —  and  in  the 
main  are  true,  thoughtful,  even  learned.  Ours  is  the  real 
age  of  historic  reproduction.  We  may  take  it  as  certain 
that,  in  the  history  of  the  world,  there  never  was  a  time 
when  the  exact  picture  of  distant  ages  and  races  was  repro- 
duced with  an  illusion  so  complete.  It  is  a  very  valuable 
mode  of  education,  and  might  be  carried  much  farther. 
Our  revived  Greek  Plays  can  teach  even  scholars  a  good 
deal;  and  a  historian  might  gain  an  idea  from  the  mise-en- 
scene  of  Becket,  even  if  we  suppose  the  historian  deaf,  or 
otherwise  unable  to  follow  the  Martyr's  speeches.  We  live 
in  an  age  especially  great  in  the  historic  niise-en-scene,  and 
we  ought  to  be  thankful. 

It  is  not  only  the  stage  decorations,  costumes,  scenery 
and  historic  realism  which  have  greatly  improved  in  the 
present  generation.  The  rank  and  file,  if  they  have  not 
yet  grown  to  be  finished  actors,  no  longer  set  our  teeth  on 
edge  with  excruciating  vulgarisms  and  grotesque  ignorance 
of  the  habits  and  speech  of  ladies  and  gentlemen.  Accord- 
ing to  Punch,  young  men  of  birth  and  breeding  are  now 
flooding  the  stage,  and  an  actor  or  two  is  indispensable  at 
a  Duchess'  tea-party.  Whatever  be  the  cause,  the  manners 
of  the  stage  are  greatly  improved,  especially  in  light  comedy, 
and  the  ordinary  "society"  play.  The  difference  between  a 
"genteel  comedy"  in  1843  and  one  in  1893  is  the  difference 
between  the  servants'  hall  and  the  drawing-room.  In  farce 
they  were  then  very  good,  and  in  melodrama  sometimes 
effective  enough.  But  in  presenting  the  polite  society  of 
their  own  day,  the  utility  men  and  women  of  fifty  years  ago 
spoke  like  valets  and  lady's  maids,  and  had  hardly  any 
higher  education  outside  their  purely  professional  training. 


THE    REVIVAL   OF    THE    DRAMA  281 

We  have  changed  all  that.  The  company  of  a  first-class 
English  theatre  have  not  yet  reached  that  easy  perfection 
of  the  Comedie  Francaise  —  say  in  Le  Monde  oil  Von  s'ennuie, 
or  in  La  joie  fait  pear;  but  tone  of  voice,  look,  bearing,  are 
not  outrageously  unlike  those  of  real  society;  and  however 
much  it  falls  short  of  fine  acting,  a  modern  comedy  does  not 
become  an  utter  farce.  Air.  Irving,  Air.  Tree,  Air.  Bancroft, 
and  Mr.  Kendal  have  accustomed  us  to  see  contemporary 
life  presented  on  the  stage  of  their  theatres  with  a  very  fair 
approach  to  reality,  and  with  perhaps  little  more  of  paint, 
"deportment,"  and  false  emphasis,  than  what  is  almost  in- 
separable from  footlights  and  boards  —  at  least  from  English 
boards.     [1893.] 

There  is  another  significant  change  —  on  the  whole  a 
change  for  the  better.  The  melodrama  of  the  old  Surrey 
and  the  old  Adelphi,  the  dramatised  tales  of  the  Harrison 
Ainsworth  period,  which  Nicholas  Nickleby  presented  to  the 
provinces,  were  indescribable  burlesques  of  passion,  adven- 
ture, and  crime,  as  traditionally  understood  on  the  minor 
stage.  An  actor  of  parts  would  occasionally  strike  out  from 
them  a  lurid  flash  of  horror  and  agony,  and  there  was  a  cer- 
tain rattle  and  ring  about  them,  in  spite  of  their  gross  ex- 
travagance. But  as  a  whole  they  deserved  the  contempt  to 
which  our  better  taste  and  improved  culture  have  consigned 
them.  Their  place  has  been  taken  by  pure  realism,  the 
exact  representation  of  familiar  sights:  a  house  on  fire,  a 
criminal  court,  a  sweater's  den,  a  soldier's  street  row,  or  a 
picnic  on  the  river.  Why  crowds  should  pay  their  money 
to  see  on  the  stage  a  policeman,  a  guardsman,  a  fire-engine, 
a  race-horse,  and  a  coster's  jackass,  which  they  can  see  in 
the  streets  any  day  without  paying  at  all ;  why  a  city  public 
should  be  delighted  to  see  itself  in  a  coloured  photograph 
behaving  just  as  it  does  outside,  in  the  identical  clothes,  with 


282  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

identical  animals,  vehicles,  and  other  properties,  is  a  mystery. 
It  is  not  art ;  it  is  not  education ;  it  is  not  fun.  It  is  pure 
commonplace,  and  utterly  dull.  But  it  is  harmless,  and  on 
the  whole  it  is  better  than  gross  melodramatic  rant. 

It  is  easy  then  to  sum  up  the  features  wherein  the  English 
stage  of  to-day  has  made  distinct  advance  upon  the  stage 
of  the  'Forties  and  the  'Fifties  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
First  and  foremost  comes  the  artistic  and  intelligent  setting 
of  great  historic  plays;  next,  the  rank  and  file  at  the  best 
theatres  can  present  modern  life  with  some  fair  resemblance 
to  what  we  see  in  the  world,  and  not  in  a  coarse  stage  con- 
vention; lastly,  the  melodramas  of  the  second  and  third 
class  have  replaced  intolerable  burlesque  by  photographic 
realism,  which,  however  pointless  and  ugly,  is  neither  de- 
praving nor  absurd.  These  are  distinct  gains,  but  they  are 
not  gains  of  a  very  high  order.  They  would  hardly  suffice 
to  throw  Byron  into  convulsions.  Do  they  add  appreciably 
to  the  incorporation  of  the  higher  theatre  with  the  greater 
literature?  Has  our  drama  thereby  become  a  substantive 
part,  an  essential,  a  beautiful  part  of  our  poetry  and  of  our 
art?  Does  our  modern  stage  feed,  stimulate,  and  interpret 
the  higher  imagination  in  its  best  work?  Is  it  a  trivial 
amusement  or  a  true  civilising  force? 

The  question  is  a  very  fair  one,  but  by  no  means  easy  to 
answer.  During  the  whole  period  of  Attic  tragedy,  during 
the  whole  period  of  Attic  comedy,  old,  middle,  and  new, 
that  is  to  say  practically  from  the  battle  of  Marathon  to  the 
Roman  dominion,  this  was  certainly  true  of  the  Greek 
theatre,  that  it  was  a  civilising  force.  It  was  true  of  the  age 
of  Plautus,  Terence,  and  even  Seneca.  It  was  true  of  the 
Passion-plays  and  Miracle-plays  of  the  Middle  Ages.  It  was 
true  of  the  age  of  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  Dryden,  and  Con- 
greve.     It  was  true  of  Garrick  and  Goldsmith,  of  the  age 


THE    REVIVAL    OF    THE    DRAMA  283 

of  the  Kembles,  of  Sheridan,  of  Byron.  It  was  obviously 
so  in  the  age  of  the  Spanish  drama  and  also  in  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV. ;  and  it  was  so  in  the  best  age  of  the  opera.  It 
was  so  with  Alfieri  and  with  Goethe,  Schiller,  and  Lessing. 
During  almost  every  great  epoch  of  literary  creation,  the 
tragic  and  the  comic  genius  have  found  an  instinctive  affinity 
with  the  drama,  have  given  to  the  drama  of  their  best,  and 
have  found  inspiration  in  the  stage.  Ours  is  an  age,  we 
are  constantly  reminded,  of  splendid  genius.  Does  that 
genius  give  as  much  to  the  drama,  find  as  much  in  the 
drama,  as  in  so  many  various  phases  of  civilisation  it  was 
wont  to  do? 

Take  our  tragedies  and  great  historical  plays.  They  are 
certainly  presented  now  with  far  greater  knowledge,  taste, 
and  scenic  art  than  perhaps  at  any  former  time.  As  tableaux 
vivants,  the  best  of  them  are  nearly  perfect.  [1893. J  Shake- 
speare would  at  last  come  to  believe  himself  to  be  a  mighty 
poet  (an  idea  which  on  earth  never  seems  to  have  crossed 
his  mind  for  an  instant)  if  he  could  see  Mr.  Irving's  Hamlet, 
Wolsey,  Shylock,  or  Mary  Anderson's  Winter's  Tale,  or  Mr. 
Benson's  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  Mr.  Tree's  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor  —  provided  his  ears  had  been  carefully 
plugged  with  cotton  wool.  To  the  eye  the  effect  is  perfect. 
But  this  is  not  enough.  Is  the  acting  of  Shakespeare  ade- 
quate to-day?  To  those  who  have  seen  really  great  acting, 
to  those  who  have  carefully  studied  the  traditions  of  the 
stage,  and  who  have  heard  from  competent  judges  what 
Kean,  Mrs.  Siddons,  Miss  O'Neill,  and  Kemble  were,  the 
question  has  but  one  answer.  For  sixty  or  seventy  years  at 
least,  no  really  great  tragedian  has  ever  been  heard  in  Eng- 
lish. Those  who  saw  Rachel  at  her  best  in  Phedre  have 
known  what  great  tragic  acting  can  be;  and  we  might  add 
perhaps  Got  at  his  best,   Salvini  in  his  prime  in   Otello, 


284  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Ristori  at  her  best,  in  Rosmunda,  and  perhaps  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt, at  her  best,  in  x\ndromaque.  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  all  of  these  have  been  seen  very  far  from  at  their 
best,  and  especially  on  a  foreign  stage  to  an  unsympathetic 
audience  very  imperfectly  understanding  their  language. 
Let  us  take  as  a  standard  of  measurement  —  Rachel,  between 
1840-1850,  playing  Phedre  at  her  best  to  a  French  audience. 
That  was  consummate  tragic  acting.  For  seventy  years  no 
English  tragedian  has  ever  approached  that  standard. 

We  all  admire  the  thoughtfulness,  the  ingenuity,  the 
varied  accomplishments  of  Mr.  Irving,  of  the  late  Mr. 
Booth,  and  of  Mr.  Tree  and  of  others  who  are  certainly 
actors  of  great  merit;  and  Mary  Anderson,  Ellen  Terry 
Ada  Rehan,  Mrs.  Langtry  and  the  rest,  are  charming  women, 
who  at  times  touch  a  very  sweet  note.  But  when  we  come 
to  measure  our  present  tragic  acting  by  a  really  high  stand- 
ard, we  cannot  count  a  single  man  of  the  first  rank,  nor  a 
single  woman  of  the  second.  The  result  is  that  our  tragedies, 
even  the  best  on  the  best  stage,  remain  spectacles  —  things 
to  look  at,  things  to  think  over,  and  to  learn  from  —  but 
they  never  touch  such  chords  of  feeling  as  Mirra  and  Sir 
Giles  Overreach  roused  in  Byron,  nor  even  wring  a  tear  or 
a  sob  from  the  most  impressionable  woman.  We  come 
away  with  several  tips  on  archaeology  and  some  new  read- 
ings from  the  "second  folio";  and  we  say  "What  a  lovely 
costume  she  wore  to-night !"  —  "How  wonderfully  he  makes 
up  for  Hamlet!" — but  we  are  happily  spared  convulsions 
which  make  us  ill  for  a  fortnight.  We  have  grown  out  of 
such  nonsense;  we  go  on  to  a  late  "crush,"  and  talk  about 
it  as  we  do  of  the  Private  View  of  the  New  Gallery.  That 
is  to  say,  a  tragedy  with  us  to-day  is  a  refined  form  of  enter- 
tainment, but  is  no  longer  a  living  well-spring  of  poetic  life. 

Our  average  of  culture  in  modern  play  and  comedy  is 


THE    REVIVAL    OF    THE    DRAMA  285 

very  much  higher,  the  whole  scenic  business  is  far  better, 
and  the  insufferable  '"staginess"  of  forty  years  ago  is  purged 
out  of  us.  But  it  would  be  rash  to  assert  that  the  leading 
parts  of  tragedy,  comedy,  or  farce  are  really  better  acted 
now.  Those  who  remember  all  that  Macready  and  Charles 
Kean  did  to  make  Shakespeare  popular,  all  that  Wigan  and 
Matthews  did  for  comedy,  all  that  Robson  and  Keeley  did 
for  farce,  will  hesitate  to  assert  that  we  have  superior  actors 
to-day.  Our  companies  are  far  more  educated;  we  put 
everything  on  the  stage  with  infinitely  greater  art;  we  have 
suppressed  a  mass  of  vulgarity  and  bombast.  But  the  lead- 
ing parts  are  not  better  filled  than  they  were  two  generations 
ago.  They  still  remain  a  whole  class  below  the  best  con- 
temporary acting  of  the  continent;  and  they  cannot  be 
named  with  the  best  English  acting  of  the  early  years  of 
this  century,  nor  even  judged  by  the  standard  which  experi- 
enced play-goers  now  living  have  been  taught  to  recognise 
as  great  art. 

All  this  is  a  very  unpopular  thing  to  say,  and  is  sure  to 
provoke  even  angry  rejoinders.  The  heat  of  party  politics 
is  mild  in  comparison  with  the  heat  of  affairs  of  taste.  To 
disparage  a  man's  favourite  actor  is  an  offence,  we  all  know, 
worse  than  to  doubt  about  his  wife's  style  of  dress,  or  the 
absolute  sanitation  of  his  house-drain.  Many  men,  es- 
pecially of  the  younger  generation  and  such  as  have  had  no 
opportunities  of  ever  seeing  the  higher  acting  at  all,  cannot 
believe  that  what  has  given  them  so  much  pleasure  can  be- 
long to  any  but  the  highest  type.  And  most  young  men  now 
and  then  become  the  loyal  liegemen  of  some  fascinating 
actress,  whom,  in  the  delightful  abandon  peculiar  to  their 
age  and  condition,  they  take  to  be  the  equal  of  the  terrific 
Rachel  or  the  irresistible  Sarah.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  older 
generation  and  of  the  larger  experience  to  correct  their  par- 


286  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

donable  extravagances  and  their  generous  illusions;  to  insist 
on  the  permanent  standards  of  all  noble  art,  and  the  far- 
reaching  importance  of  maintaining  that  art  in  all  its  re- 
action over  life. 

The  really  important  thing  in  the  matter  is  the  interaction 
of  Literature,  Art,  and  the  Drama,  using  all  three  terms  in 
their  high  sense  as  great  civilising  forces.  Is  the  relation  of 
poetry  and  the  stage  to-day  all  that  it  might  be,  all  that  in 
some  ages  it  has  been?  Does  the  stage  continue  to  add 
lasting  works  of  real  genius  to  our  literature?  Do  our 
poets,  our  romancers,  and  thinkers  work  for  the  stage,  draw 
from  the  stage?  It  was  an  event  when  the  great  poet  of 
the  Victorian  age  first,  in  his  later  period,  produced  an  act- 
ing drama.  He  did  so  towards  the  close  of  his  career,  with 
some  hesitation  and  distaste,  and  in  just  rivalry  with  the 
great  poet  of  France.  It  cannot  be  said  that  his  dramas 
hold  any  such  place  in  his  total  work  as  do  the  dramas  of 
Hugo  in  his  work ;  nor  are  Harold  and  Becket  at  all  destined 
to  hold  such  a  place  in  English'  literature,  as  Hernani  and 
Ruy  Bias  hold  in  French  literature.  In  spite  of  the  beautiful 
setting  in  which  we  witness  Becket,  and  its  own  interest  as 
poetry,  the  true  Tennysonian  will  always  rate  In  Memoriam, 
the  Lyrics,  and  the  Songs,  as  of  vastly  higher  power.  Tenny- 
son wrote  for  the  stage  late  in  his  career,  doubtfully  and 
without  adding  to  his  established  reputation.  And  except 
Tennyson,  we  have  hardly  a  single  example  of  any  writer 
of  "the  front  bench"  of  our  literature  who  has  produced  a 
single  acting  drama  that  now  holds  the  stage  or  is  ever  likely 
to  do  so.  Browning,  Matthew  Arnold,  George  Eliot,  Swin- 
burne, Lewis  Morris,  Buchanan  and  many  others  have 
written  dialogues,  lyrical  dramas,  and  dramatic  fantasias; 
but  there  is  not  one  acting  play  among  these  pieces,  nor  has 
the  stage  of  to-day  ever  coloured  a  line  of  them. 


THE    REVIVAL    OF    THE    DRAMA  287 

It  is  true  that  there  are  men  of  real  ability  who  produce 
effective  plays,  and  men  of  letters  and  of  various  powers 
who  take  a  keen  interest  in  the  stage.  But  the  vast  bulk  of 
our  stage  pieces  are  the  work  of  playwrights  rather  than 
poets,  and  the  severance  of  the  purely  literary  and  the  the- 
atrical world  is  very  marked.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find 
any  age  or  any  country  where  the  severance  had  been  so 
complete.  In  France  the  majority  of  men  of  letters  have 
tried  their  hand  at  a  play  or  two;  and  the  stage  contributes 
an  important  part  to  the  national  literature. 

What  is  the  cause  ?  The  most  immediate  cause  is  this  — 
that  the  English  stage  of  to-day,  though  sufficiently  culti- 
vated to  form  an  occasional  entertainment,  is  not  sufficiently 
alive  to  occupy  the  serious  hours  of  men  of  "light  and  lead- 
ing." Men  of  light  and  leading  never  find  their  imagination 
set  on  fire  by  any  really  great  acting  on  an  English  stage; 
and  it  rarely  occurs  to  them  that  the  imagination  can  achieve 
some  of  its  noblest  work  on  the  stage  and  by  the  instrument 
of  the  drama.  The  late  Laureate  gave  them  a  clear  and 
brave  example;  but  he  was  so  unfamiliar  with  the  whole 
dramatic  business,  that  his  example  failed  to  encourage  his 
poetic  and  literary  compeers.  Mr.  Irving  reminded  him 
that  the  public  loved  its  sensations  rather  vivid:  and  no 
one  can  doubt  that  Mr.  Irving  knew  his  public. 

England  is  not,  never  was,  and  perhaps  never  can  be, 
the  home  of  the  greatest  acting.  A  Garrick,  a  Kean,  may 
appear  once  in  a  century,  just  as  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Goethe 
may.  But  Englishmen  as  compared  with  Frenchmen,  Ital- 
ians, even  with  Germans  and  Hungarians  and  Poles,  are 
not  born  actors,  and,  except  in  farce,  with  difficulty  rise 
to  what  in  Europe  is  counted  sound  mediocrity.  In  farce 
and  in  burlesque,  we  have  always  been  strong;  but  that  is 
not  a  form  of  art  which  easily  allies  itself  to  the  higher  imagina- 


288  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

tion.  There  are,  moreover,  special  hindrances  to  great  art, 
and  these  have  been  multiplied  by  railroads  and  all  the 
mobility  of  recent  habits.  The  capital  is  a  nation  in  itself 
■ —  and  a  nation  which  is  always  moving.  The  enormous 
extent  of  London  makes  it  costly  and  troublesome  to  go  to  a 
theatre  constantly.  London  again  contains  a  vast  floating 
population,  which  business  and  pleasure  have  drawn  there 
for  a  few  weeks  or  even  days.  This  nomad  body  is  as  nu- 
merous as  the  whole  population  of  a  great  city.  It  has 
abundant  leisure  in  the  evening,  craves  a  little  novelty  and 
distraction,  and  is  quite  the  reverse  of  critical.  There  is 
thus  no  permanent  and  trained  audience  in  a  London  theatre. 
It  is  largely  made  up  of  casual  elements  from  the  provinces 
or  the  suburbs,  who  are  not  regular  play-goers,  who  have  a 
minimum  of  culture  and  are  very  easily  pleased  with  a  lively 
entertainment. 

Now  the  essential  conditions  of  a  really  great  theatre  are: 
first,  a  permanent  and  trained  audience;  next,  freedom  from 
pecuniary  anxieties  and  any  temptation  to  get  big  houses 
by  sensations  and  spectacles;  and  lastly,  a  vigorous,  inde- 
pendent, and  dominant  school  of  criticism.  The  audience 
must  come  regularly  and  be  perfectly  familiar  with  each 
piece  and  each  actor.  A  regular  and  highly  trained  audience 
will  of  course  require  a  considerable  repertoire  and  a  constant 
change  in  the  bill.  It  will  insist  on  a  wide  range  of  con- 
trasted pieces,  and  each  actor  appearing  in  new  characters. 
This  makes  "runs"  impossible.  And  a  "run  of  a  hundred 
nights"  spells  poor  playing,  for  it  means  that  the  theatre  is 
nightly  filled  with  a  succession  of  casual  visitors,  who  can 
have  no  serious  opinion  of  their  own,  and  whose  opinion, 
except  that  they  pay  their  money,  does  not  concern  the 
actor  or  the  manager.  When  a  piece  runs  for  a  hundred 
or  two  hundred  nights,  it  involves  the  shutting  the  doors  of 


THE   REVIVAL   OF   THE   DRAMA  289 

the  house  on  all  regular  play-goers  for  96  or  196  nights;  for 
no  rational  lover  of  the  drama  can  care  to  see  the  same 
piece  more  than  three  or  four  times  within  a  few  months, 
unless  he  go  to  the  theatre  to  see  his  friends  or  exhibit  his 
devotion  to  a  particular  "star."  Unless  the  play-bill  is  con- 
tinually varied,  the  audience  must  be  a  nomad  and  casual 
one.  And  a  casual  audience  is  ex  vi  termini  ignorant,  un- 
critical, easily  satisfied,  and  unable  to  influence  the  players 
—  for  the  bulk  of  them  have  come  to  see  a  gorgeous  spectacle 
or  to  say  they  have  seen  a  famous  actor. 

A  theatre  which  has  to  depend  on  the  daily  reports  from 
the  till  is  under  constant  pressure  of  the  most  urgent  kind 
to  fill  the  house  —  rem,  quocunque  modo,  rem,  is  the  motto, 
rem  meaning  a  big  house.  Now,  we  all  know  that  a  house 
may  be  filled  by  gorgeous  costumes,  real  water,  and  a  new 
use  of  the  electric  light.  The  higher  class  of  managers 
have  shown  a  really  noble  courage  in  resisting  the  tempta- 
tion to  degrade  the  theatre.  But  they  must  live.  And  they 
have  to  compromise :  they  begin  with  a  beautiful  and  correct 
setting  of  their  piece;  it  passes  on  into  fine  clothes,  costly 
properties,  and  the  greasy  "boom"  business,  so  that  the 
most  high-principled  manager  finds  that  he  will  be  ruined, 
unless  his  piece  can  run  a  hundred  nights.  If  it  does,  he 
gets  a  low-class  audience  and  shuts  his  doors  on  the  really 
trained  judges. 

No  company  can  be  really  trained  unless  they  constantly 
play  to  a  body  of  competent  judges.  And  these  must  be 
guided  by  a  school  of  criticism  of  a  high  intellectual  order, 
having  command  of  great  literary  organs.  The  company 
also,  either  by  esprit  de  corps,  the  joint-stock  system,  or 
some  internal  organisation,  needs  to  be  as  strictly  disciplined 
as  a  good  ship's  crew,  and  should  be  as  completely  in  the 
hands  of  a  competent  captain.     This  is  how  "the  House  of 


290 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


Moliere"  has  flourished  for  two  centuries;  and  every  great 
theatre  abroad  or  at  home.  The  conditions  of  a  great 
theatre  are  (1)  a  regular,  trained,  and  judicial  audience; 
(2)  a  pecuniary  position  independent  of  speculation  or  for- 
tune-hunting, able  to  dispense  with  "runs"  and  "bumper" 
houses;  (3)  a  company  under  absolute  discipline  playing 
before  a  school  of  criticism,  of  high  culture,  fearless  inde- 
pendence, and  paramount  authority. 

It  will  be  said  that  these  conditions,  and  perhaps  any  one 
of  them,  are  impossible  in  England  or  in  America.  And 
perhaps  they  may  be,  in  the  absence  of  any  assistance  from 
the  State,  in  the  costliness  of  first-rate  artistic  power,  and  in 
the  chaos  of  critical  judgment.  Under  the  present  arrange- 
ments of  society,  the  market  price  ruling  everything  we  do, 
it  must  be  allowed  that  a  theatre  organised  on  a  high  level 
is  not  to  be  dreamed  of.  But  there  is  a  conceivable  plan  on 
which  (dream  though  it  be)  we  might  see  a  great  theatre 
grow  up  and  flourish.  A  great  theatre  would  require  a 
large  trained  body  of  actors,  receiving  regular  and  liberal 
salaries  on  a  permanent  engagement,  with  a  stake  in  the 
fortunes  of  the  house  and  a  voice  in  its  management,  but 
otherwise  liberally  maintained  and  under  strict  discipline. 
The  pieces  must  be  varied,  and  both  parts  and  pieces  con- 
tinually interchanged.  The  appointments  must  be  beautiful, 
complete,  and  correct.  The  director  must  have  complete 
control,  and  yet  have  no  temptation  to  fill  his  pockets  or  to 
exhibit  his  own  genius.  These  conditions  involve,  it  is  ob- 
vious, a  large  deficit  at  the  end  of  the  year.  Such  a  house 
would  not  be  crowded  with  nomad  bagmen  and  cockneys 
on  the  spree,  but  by  a  regular  and  trained  body  of  critical 
play-goers.  And  such  an  audience  would  not  be  able  to 
pay  for  a  large  company  at  high  and  permanent  salaries,  an 
artistic  and  learned  mise-en-scene,  and  a  play-bill  varied  two 


THE   REVIVAL   OF   THE   DRAMA  29 1 

or  three  times  a  week.  Who  then  is  going  to  meet  the 
deficit?  For  it  is  perfectly  certain  that,  in  England  and 
America,  the  State  will  not  contribute  a  cent. 

I  believe  the  day  will  come  when  public-spirited  citizens 
will  undertake  this  social  duty  on  public  grounds.  There 
is  no  end  to  which  wealth,  taste,  and  munificence  could  more 
properly  devote  itself.  Libraries,  museums,  institutes,  parks, 
picture-galleries,  and  colleges,  are  continually  being  dedi- 
cated to  the  public  by  generous  benefactors  who  desire  to 
make  a  social  use  of  some  part  of  their  fortune.  Why  does 
not  one  of  these  men  found  a  theatre  and  endow  it  for  a 
given  period,  or  run  a  theatre  on  a  grand  scale  out  of  his 
own  purse?  Such  theatres  as  the  Comedie  Francaise  could 
be  run  for  ten  or  twenty  years  at  least  for  the  same  capital 
sum  as  is  often  sunk  in  a  college  or  a  gallery  of  pictures. 
Of  course  the  public  would  pay  at  the  doors  the  current 
rates,  and  the  founder  would  have  to  meet  only  the  annual 
deficit,  and  he  could  always  fill  the  theatre  with  gratuitous 
orders  judiciously  distributed.  All  great  theatres  that  are 
known  to  history  were  supported  by  the  munificence  of 
private  citizens.  The  theatre  at  Athens  was  maintained 
during  the  whole  of  its  glorious  career  by  these  means,  which 
were  known  as  " liturgies"  or  public  services.  So  was  the 
theatre  and  indeed  all  the  spectacles  at  Rome,  both  under 
Republic  and  Empire.  So  was  the  theatre  of  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV.,  so  was  that  of  Weimar  in  the  age  of  Goethe. 
And  out  of  the  same  system  arose  the  opera  and  almost  the 
whole  of  the  music  of  modern  Europe,  whether  for  chamber 
or  .theatre.  Our  later  age  has  determined  to  deal  in  drama 
just  as  it  deals  in  pork  —  and  we  see  the  result  in  the  system 
of  "stars,"  spectacular  pieces,  and  the  advertising  boom. 

It    must    be    surely   some  kind    of    antiquated    religious 
prejudice    which    has  hitherto   diverted    from    the    theatre 


292  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

the  munificent  stream  of  public  benefactions  which  flow  so 
freely  for  other  forms  of  art.  Why  do  we  retain  for  this 
branch  of  art  alone  the  rigid  idea  of  money  down  and  market 
value  for  the  money?  In  ancient  times  the  theatre  was  a 
public  and  even  a  religious  festival,  and  the  audience  prac- 
tically had  gratuitous  entrance.  In  a  gallery  of  ancient 
masters,  a  museum  of  antiquities  or  a  scientific  institute,  it  is 
not  thought  essential  to  take  money  at  the  doors,  nor  is  the 
value  of  the  collection  to  be  measured  by  the  number  who 
pass  the  turnstiles.  The  National  Museums  of  Europe  and 
America,  to  which  citizens  are  free,  contain  on  the  whole 
more  than  is  open  to  the  paying  public  at  the  World's  Fair. 
There  is  no  absolute  bond  between  excellence  and  price. 
Many  a  precious  thing  is  free  to  all :  many  a  costly  thing  is 
worthless  to  every  one.  And  this  is  especially  true  of  Art, 
where  cost  and  value  are  not  seldom  in  inverse  ratio  to 
each  other.  A  great  theatre  must  be  a  theatre  on  an  intel- 
lectual, moral,  and  social  level  with  a  great  collection  of  art 
treasures.  It  can  never  be  maintained  by  the  money  taken 
at  the  doors,  till  the  culture  and  habits  of  our  people  are 
entirely  transformed.  And  the  only  way  in  which  it  can  be 
maintained  is  by  the  munificence  of  some  citizen  of  great 
wealth,  high  culture,  and  ardent  public  spirit. 


P.S.  1908.  —  How  different  a  song  we  all  sing  to-day ! 
But  such  was  our  ill-humour  in  the  ancient  days  of  the  pre- 
Shavian,  pre-Arthurian,  pre-Pinerotic  era. 


Ill 

DECADENCE   IN  MODERN  ART 

(From  "The  Forum,"  N.Y.,  1893) 

There  is  no  feature  in  our  present  age  of  which  we  are  more 
proud  than  our  revived  interest  in  Art,  our  renewed  success 
in  Art;  and  we  are  wont  to  look  back  on  our  grandfathers 
as  having  lived  in  the  dark  ages  of  taste.  There  is  solid 
ground  for  this  pride;  our  knowledge,  our  judgment,  our  in- 
stinct for  Art  have  shown  for  more  than  a  generation  a  great 
development.  Our  zeal  for  new  forms  of  art  is  conspicuous. 
But,  with  an  irrepressible  thirst  to  be  original  at  any  cost, 
there  is  a  tendency  at  work  of  a  thoroughly  debased  kind. 
Of  the  dangers  of  this  I  would  say  a  few  words. 

Reaction  against  the  conventional,  the  melodramatic  and 
the  "sweetly  pretty,"  is  wholesome  and  natural;  and  it  is 
much  to  have  secured  a  general  revolt  against  these  besetting 
vices  of  an  artificial  age.  But  revolt  and  iconoclasm  are 
only  the  beginning  of  reformation;  and  in  Art  especially 
the  more  violent,  forms  of  protest  are  full  of  harm.  It  boots 
little  to  be  rid  of  the  conventional  in  order  to  set  up  an  idol 
in  the  brutal,  the  coarse,  the  odd,  the  accidental,  and  dull 
imitation  of  rank  commonplace.  Yet  this  is  a  growing  creed 
amongst  the  motley  crowds  of  those  who  imagine  themselves 
to  be  pursuing* Art  in  many  forms  and  under  very  different 
inspiration. 

In  literature,  in  the  drama,  in  painting,  in  sculpture,  even 
in  architecture  and  in  music,  we  are  now  bidden  to  admire 

293 


294  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

what  is  simply  novel ;  and  the  test  of  true  genius  is  discovered 
to  be  the  disgusting  or  the  eccentric.  In  the  vast  field  of 
literature,  which  is  so  infinitely  more. subtle  and  complex 
than  any  other  form  of  art,  it  is  true  that,  under  strict  reserve, 
and  in  a  master's  hand,  there  is  room  for  idiosyncrasies  and 
for  horrors.  In  fiction,  and  to  some  degree  in  poetry,  a 
powerful  imagination  may  deal  with  the  grotesque  and  the 
repulsive.  Their  suggestions  are  far  less  concrete  and  defi- 
nite than  those  of  the  arts  of  form.  But  painting,  with  its 
sharp,  vivid,  imitative  limits,  cannot  safely  venture  on  these 
gross  reproductions  of  the  brutal  and  the  vulgar.  When 
painting  does  this,  it  is  degenerating  into  literary  instead  of 
artistic  resources.  And  it  is  a  proof  of  decadence  and  aim- 
less vacuity  when  the  painter  endeavours  to  goad  us  into 
interest  by  the  same  appeal  to  our  sense  of  disgust  with 
which  the  novelist  has  long  exhausted  our  patience. 

At  the  root  of  his  tendency  lie  mere  conceit,  a  craving  for 
notice,  and  ignorance  of  the  methods,  limits,  and  conditions 
of  Art.  A  raw  lad  who,  except  that  he  can  twirl  about  a 
brush,  has  as  little  intellectual  training  as  an  errand-boy, 
solemnly  warns  us  —  "That  is  what  /  see!"  —  "That  is 
what  /  like  I"  —  "This  and  That  are  what  /  know  !"  But 
what  if  the  visions  of  this  youth,  his  likes  and  his  dislikes  — 
even  what  he  calls  his  "joys"  and  his  "passions" —  are  wholly 
without  interest  or  value  to  any  rational  and  cultivated  man  ? 
What,  if  the  queer  things  he  may  have  learned  in  some 
obscure  hole,  are  tedious,  it  may  be  nauseous,  to  thinking 
people  who  want  no  such  experience  ?  A  man  may  go  down 
into  a  sewer,  or  a  dissecting-room,  or  a  coal-pit,  and  may 
there  see  things  which  are  not  familiar  to  the  public  and  which 
it  would  disgust  the  public  to  see.  Accordingly  he  paints 
these  things  in  an  odd  matter-of-fact  way,  as  protests  against 
the  conventional  and  the  sugary  in  Art,  and  he  calls  on  us 


DECADENCE    IN    MODERN    ART  295 

to  admire  a  really  original  masterpiece.  Michael  Angelo 
and  Rembrandt  may  occasionally  touch  such  a  subject, 
which  their  genius  could  clothe  with  a  wild  poetry.  But 
a  common  pot-boiler,  which  can  clothe  them  only  in  very 
squalid  prose,  is  mere  impertinence. 

One  rarely  sees  an  exhibition  of  pictures  now,  especially 
in  France,  without  plenty  of  literal  transcripts  from  hospitals, 
police  cells,  and  dens  of  infamy.  A  powerful  imagination 
might  find  art  even  there.  But  the  aim  of  these  modern 
"artists"  is  not  art  —  but  disgust.  They  give  us  merely 
coloured  photographs,  without  grace,  pathos,  awe,  life,  or 
invention.  Their  purpose  is  to  be  as  ugly,  as  crude,  as 
photographic,  as  unpleasant,  as  canvas  and  dull  paint  can 
make  it.  It  is  not  even  grim;  it  is  not  sensational;  it  is 
not  a  tour  de  force.  Everything  is  flat,  angular,  prosaic, 
nasty.  Few  persons  have  witnessed  the  operation  of  ovariot- 
omy, or  a  lesson  in  anatomy,  or  a  drunken  orgy  in  a  night- 
house.  To  give  a  literal  rendering  of  one  of  such  scenes 
ministers  in  some  to  a  prurient  curiosity.  And  the  artist  has 
his  reward  in  the  grinning  groups  around  his  work.  But 
it  is  no  more  art  than  is  the  report  of  a  filthy  trial,  or  the  de- 
scriptions in  a  manual  of  surgery. 

Another  favourite  device,  again  in  France  especially  is 
the  serving  up  to  the  general  public  those  nasty  oddities 
which  are  inevitable  in  the  studio,  the  dressing-rooms  of  a 
theatre,  or  a  booth  at  a  country  fair,  or  any  other  place  where 
habit  and  toil  have  expelled  modesty  and  refinement.  "The 
model  scratching  her  back,"  "The  model  has  sat  down  on 
a  wet  palette,"  "The  acrobat  enjoying  a  jug  of  beer,"  — 
such  are  good  titles  in  the  catalogue  to  arouse  a  jaded  interest. 
Any  stupid  horse-play  which  causes  a  grin  in  a  studio  or  a 
circus  will  equally  serve  the  turn.  It  is  novel  to  the  public ; 
and  to  paint  it  with  a  dull  photographic  realism  will  give  the 


296  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

spectator  a  puzzle  to  work  out.  Crowds  will  say  —  "What 
on  earth  is  that?"  They  never  saw  anything  like  it;  and  so 
it  will  supply  them  with  new  information  and  experience. 

Some  hold  that  Art  means  utter  dulness  and  strict  elimina- 
tion of  every  source  of  interest.  A  dirty  old  woman  vacantly 
staring  at  a  heap  of  stones,  a  pig  wallowing  in  fetid  mud, 
a  dusty  high  road  between  two  blank  walls,  a  sand-bank 
under  a  leaden  sky  —  such  are  the  chosen  spectacles  dear 
to  rising  genius.  It  is  impossible  to  find  in  them  a  trace 
of  beauty,  poetry,  pathos,  incident,  or  grace.  When  these  are 
presented  with  a  monotonous  realism  in  a  uniform  tone  of 
drab  or  mud,  we  are  triumphantly  told  that  conventionalism 
is  routed  and  Truth  in  art  is  enthroned.  There  are  now  to 
be  seen  pictures  on  Exhibition  walls  wherein  nothing  whatever 
can  be  detected  but  a  sickly  blur  in  a  haze  of  grey  monochrome. 
It  is  true  that  sensationalism  and  conventionalism  are  at  last 
got  rid  of.  But  so  they  would  be,  if  the  artist  had  left  his 
canvas  blank,  or  had  put  his  palette  in  a  gold  frame  and 
named  it  "Day-dreams,"  or  a  "Fugue  in  primitive  colours." 

Others  again,  in  pursuit  of  the  novel  and  the  real,  will 
laboriously  discover  some  trick  in  nature,  some  unfamiliar 
and  quite  accidental  collocation  of  objects,  some  artificial 
reflection,  some  conundrum  in  colour,  and  they  very  con- 
scientiously paint  the  queer  subject.  "Do  you  think  it  un- 
natural? Ah  !  then  you  never  saw  a  green  frog  crawling  over 
a  bare  bosom  in  a  flash  of  lightning.  If  you  had,  you  would 
have  seen  just  that!"  It  may  be;  but  we  don't  want  to 
perpetuate  such  unusual  incidents,  even  if  we  ever  saw  them. 
And  if  the  scene  was  really  like  that,  it  must  have  been  any- 
thing but  pleasant.  "Who  ever  saw  a  woman  with  green 
flesh  and  blue  hair?"  —  "Yes !  but  you  never  saw  the  reflex 
colours  of  a  tropical  jungle  in  a  thunderstorm  ! "  We  certainly 
never  did.     But  when  we  go  to  picture-galleries  we  like  to 


DECADENCE   IN   MODERN  ART  297 

see  pictures,  pictures  that  are  intelligible  without  a  catalogue 
or  a  lecture  on  optics ;  and  we  do  not  care  to  see  kaleido- 
scopic juggleries  in  mysterious  frames. 

Ah !  the  frames !  Raphael  and  Titian  nowadays  have 
gone  into  partnership  with  their  frame-makers,  and  they 
share  the  glory  in  equal  halves.  Your  painter  to-day  is  as 
fantastic  in  his  frames  as  some  would-be  women  of  fashion 
in  the  device  of  their  note-paper.  Every  trick  that  was  ever 
tried  to  amuse  children  in  a  Christmas  card  now  figures  in 
a  picture  Exhibition;  and  works  of  art  are  advertised  in 
their  fancy  wrapper  like  pills  and  soap.  Of  course  the 
school  of  the  "bleeding  Coster"  has  his  slang  frame.  The 
sides  of  a  packing-case,  some  long  boots,  an  unbarked  rail, 
the  boughs  of  a  tree,  or  a  leathern  apron  —  any  one  of  these 
makes  a  new  and  effective  frame  with  downright  realism 
and  nothing  conventional  at  all.  They  call  attention  to  the 
work  of  art  inside,  if  they  do  not  monopolise  attention ;  they 
show  an  aspiring  genius  and  a  freedom  from  cant.  There  is 
one  form  of  frame  which  I  have  not  yet  seen  tried,  the  idea 
of  which  I  propose  to  patent  in  Paris,  London,  New  York, 
and  Chicago.  It  is  an  apparatus  by  which  the  frame  con- 
tains a  mechanical  whistle  or  "hooter,"  set  to  give  voice 
every  three  minutes  or  oftener  if  required.  The  fortunate 
artist  who  first  obtained  this  whistling  frame  would  force  the 
spectators  in  the  gallery  to  turn  to  his  canvas.  That  would 
give  him  what  he  seems  to  regard  as  the  main  end  of  his  art. 

We  need  say  nothing  about  the  delirious  affectation  of  "Sax 
Peladan"  and  the  "Independent  Artists"  and  of  other  petits 
maitres  who  attitudinise  in  various  galleries.  The  "hooting" 
frame  would  answer  their  purpose  far  better.  But,  as  an 
indication  of  the  "winds  of  doctrine"  now  crossing  the  art- 
world,  they  should  be  observed.  Things  must  be  out  of  joint 
when,  not  one,  but  fifty  "artists"  can  cover  the  walls  of  public 


298  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

exhibitions  with  mere  practical  jokes.  One  of  them  paints 
his  picture  —  say  a  young  woman  beside  a  river  in  a  meadow 
near  a  wood  —  and  over  the  whole  finished  piece  he  daubs 
on  purple  blotches  about  two  inches  long  and  a  third  of  an 
inch  wide.  These  streaks,  like  woolly  caterpillars  on  a  leaf, 
go  right  across  girl,  river,  meadow,  sky,  and  wood  —  "over 
all,"  as  the  heralds  say.  The  effect  is  supposed  to  be  that 
the  picture  is  worked  in  Berlin  wool.  Beside  it,  a  naked 
hermaphrodite  stands  on  the  top  of  a  deep  water  without 
sinking  through  the  surface,  gazing  at  the  sun  with  a  rapt 
expression.  These  things  are  "an  allegory"  :  this  is  modern 
symbolism.  Before  another  "symbolic"  work  of  modern 
genius  lately  stood  a  group  of  experienced  artists,  disputing 
as  to  what  was  the  visible  subject  of  the  picture.  One  thought 
it  was  a  battle-piece;  another  insisted  it  was  shell-fish  in  a 
tank ;  others  took  it  for  a  Last  Judgement ;  and  one  was 
positive  it  was  ripe  fruit. 

Unfortunately,  this  pursuit  of  the  grotesque  is  not  confined 
to  buffoons.  Men  of  real  power,  men  of  undeniable  in- 
fluence, are  making  systematic  efforts  to  establish  in  Art 
the  reign  of  ugliness,  brutality,  dulness.  Whatever  is  loath- 
some, whatever  is  eccentric,  whatever  is  common,  —  this,  we 
are  assured,  is  the  native  home  of  Art.  It  is  a  creed  prac- 
tised and  taught  by  some  who  really  can  draw  and  paint ; 
and  it  is  justified  by  a  school  of  critics  coarse  of  tongue  and 
quarrelsome  in  temper.  "  Who  drives  fat  oxen  should 
himself  be  fat,"  as  Dr.  Johnson  put  it.  And  the  apostle  of 
the  foul  in  Art  is  certainly  not  nice  in  his  language  or  cour- 
teous in  his  manners.  We  can  afford  to  pass  by  with  a 
smile  the  mere  mountebanks  and  their  literary  puffers.  But 
we  cannot  shut  our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  men  of  true  gift  and 
trained  skill  are  dragging  down  their  Art  into  the  mire ;  and 
it  is  time  to  weigh  their  claims  and  their  theories.     For  it 


DECADENCE    IN    MODERN    ART  299 

concerns  much  more  than  Art.  Like  every  other  claim  to 
degrade  human  life,  it  has  a  moral  and  a  social  side  which 
concerns  us  all. 

Reduced  to  its  elements,  their  theory  is  this: 
"Art  means  the  representation  of  Nature.  Whatever  is 
found  in  Nature  is  the  subject  of  Art.  The  test  of  Art  is 
Success  in  representation :  nothing  else  at  all.  The  business 
of  the  artist  is  to  show  how  cleverly  he  can  use  his  brush. 
It  matters  not  what  he  paints,  if  it  enables  him  to  display 
dexterity.  You,  the  spectator,  must  not  think  about  the 
painting  —  the  one  thing  to  be  thought  of  is  the  painter. 
You  may  not  like  the  result  of  his  work :  you  may  find  it 
as  a  picture,  tedious,  revolting,  grotesque.  So  much  the 
worse  for  you.  The  painter  sees  that;  the  painter  enjoys 
that  dull  or  foul  sense ;  the  painter  once  saw  that  queer  com- 
bination. It  is  no  business  of  yours  that  it  does  not  interest 
you.  Your  business  is  to  see  how  very  cleverly  he  has  put  on 
to  canvas  this  filth  or  this  dulness.  If  you  cannot  see  it, 
you  are  a  rank  Philistine,  and  had  better  buy  oleographs 
evermore.  Art  has  been  ruined  by  its  silly  straining  after  the 
beautiful,  the  ideal,  the  charming,  and  the  ennobling.  There 
is  in  Nature  quite  as  much  that  is  coarse,  dull,  odd,  and  foul 
—  perhaps  much  more  —  and  it  is  far  more  obvious  and 
intelligible.  Art  henceforth  means  the  realism  of  the  seamy 
side  of  Nature  and  Man.  We  have  been  surfeited  by  the 
pursuit  of  grace,  beauty,  and  dignity,  which  have  led  Art  into 
a  world  of  sickly  conventions.  We  are  now  in  for  naturalism 
in  its  real,  crude,  naked  shape.  If  technique  is  right,  all  is 
right.  The  one  test  of  Art  is  —  du  Chic,  du  Chic,  encore  du 
Chic!" 

These  are  the  Ten  Commandments  of  the  Ugly  School. 
And  we  may  say  at  once  that  Art  has  never  before  been  en- 
dangered bv  a  creed  at  once  so  false  and  so  base.     It  is  the 


3°° 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


product  of  conceit  in  the  artist,  stimulated  by  the  demoralising 
system  of  public  Exhibitions  filled  by  competition,  in  an  age 
when  social  principles  are  being  cast  pell-mell  into  the  melting- 
pot.  What  matters  to  us  the  cleverness  of  the  artist,  as  such  ? 
We  want  something  to  be  a  joy  for  ever ;  we  have  no  interest 
in  the  smartness  of  somebody  advertising  his  wares.  If  his 
"cleverness"  is  thrust  on  our  attention,  it  is  a  nuisance; 
if  we  perceive  his  advertising  tricks,  it  is  an  offence.  If  a 
painter  in  effect  says  to  us  —  "Never  mind  my  picture, 
look  at  my  brush-work!"  —  it  is  an  outrage.  We  could 
not  endure  the  Cartoons,  if  every  robe  were  inscribed 
"Raphael  fecit"  in  letters  a  foot  in  height.  The  painter 
who  aims  at  displaying  how  astonishingly  smart  he  can  be, 
is  not  a  painter,  but  an  acrobat.  A  tragedian  might  perform 
Hamlet  standing  on  his  head  instead  of  his  feet,  but  we  should 
not  call  him  a  great  actor.  We  come  to  see  a  drama  and  not 
a  performer's  tricks.  The  less  we  see  of  the  painter,  the  less 
we  notice  his  method,  and  the  more  we  feel  the  work  as  work 
of  art,  and  the  more  we  enjoy  it  for  itself  and  not  for  its 
producer  —  the  nearer  do  we  get  to  true  Art. 

It  is  mere  impertinence  for  a  man,  of  whose  culture  and 
attainments  we  have  no  guarantee  at  all,  to  come  forward 
and  tell  us  that  he  loves  a  murky  sky,  a  sandy  waste,  or  a 
drunken  tramp;  that  he  sees  Nature  through  a  green  or 
purple  lens ;  that  he  is  quite  at  home  in  squalid  dens  and 
dingy  byways  —  that  we  must  take  his  likes  and  dislikes, 
and  put  our  own  away.  Yes !  if  he  can  throw  poetry  and 
power  into  the  common,  if  he  be  Israels  or  Millet,  Meryon 
or  Decamps.  WTe  care  for  the  least  sign  of  interest  in  any- 
thing from  Michael  Angelo  and  Rembrandt,  because  we  have 
certain  evidence  that  they  had  a  creative  brain  and  a  profound 
spirit.  But  in  the  absence  of  any  such  evidence,  why  need 
we  adopt  the  likings  of  the  first  man  who  has  picked  up  a 


DECADENCE    IN    MODERN    ART  3OI 

trick  of  the  brush  ?  For  aught  we  know,  his  eyesight  may  have 
been  distorted,  and  his  soul  turned  sour  in  the  dregs  of  some 
Parisian  "  Trois  Rats,"  where  all  that  he  ever  knew  of  life  was 
drawn.  If  such  an  one,  without  poetry,  pathos,  or  imagina- 
tion, presents  to  us  a  crude,  dull,  photographic  copy  of  some- 
thing gross,  something  wearisome,  such  as  we  should  turn 
from  with  loathing  in  real  life,  how  is  the  offence  mended 
by  the  artist's  assurance  that  he  loves  it  himself,  and  by  his 
friends'  assurances  that  he  is  a  very  diable  du  chic  with  his 
brush  ? 

Real  genius  gives  us  a  great  deal  more  than  the  Chic,  the 
craft  of  the  brush;  and,  however  wonderful  be  its  brush- 
work,  that  is  always  the  least  part  of  the  whole,  that  of  which 
we  think  least,  and  notice  last.  To  real  genius  all  things  are 
open,  and  if  it  choose  to  rest  for  a  space  on  what  is  common 
or  gross,  genius  speaks  to  us  from  out  it  in  tones  that  go 
down  to  our  hearts.  But  the  painter  touches  the  gross  and 
the  common  at  his  peril.  If  he  has  nothing  to  tell  us  save 
that  it  is  common  and  gross,  it  avails  him  little  to  add  that 
he  is  himself  immensely  clever.  If  he  be,  let  him  give  us 
what  we  can  enjoy.  To  serve  up  what  he  enjoys  himself,  he 
might  as  well  ask  us  to  see  him  enjoy  a  brandy  cock-tail  or 
a  dish  of  tripe.  We  have  no  taste  for  tripe,  or  for  cock-tails 
—  nor  indeed  for  him.  Of  course  he  can  only  paint  what 
he  sees;  he  must  tell  us  what  he  knows;  and  show  us  what 
he  has  observed.  But  a  previous  question  arises  —  is  he 
wanted  at  all?  There  are  very  many  clever  people  in  the 
world ;  and  unfortunately,  many  of  them  are  a  mere  incum- 
brance and  nuisance  on  this  earth.  In  this  aesthetic  age, 
when  millions  of  men  and  women  are  dying  to  have  a  taste, 
a  clever  artist  of  any  kind  (be  he  only  a  good-looking  youth 
who  has  taken  to  the  stage)  can  very  soon  gather  an  admiring 
claque.     But   the  real  question  is,  whether  mere  technical 


302  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

cleverness,  without  genius  or  learning,  has  any  locus  standi 
in  an  age  of  high  culture. 

All  visible  things  may  be  painted,  and  the  accomplished 
artist  should  be  able  to  paint  anything  paintable.  It  is  no 
doubt  an  excellent  training  for  him  to  paint  anything  he 
sees,  exactly  as  he  sees  it,  however  flat,  however  ugly.  But 
this  is  merely  his  exercise,  his  studio  practice,  his  "training" 
work.  We  no  more  want  to  see  these  exercises  exhibited, 
than  we  want  to  see  the  dancer  and  the  acrobat  at  home 
training  their  muscles,  or  the  musician  practising  scales. 
The  bulk  of  what  our  modern  naturalists  exhibit  as  works  of 
art  are  nothing  but  the  crude  exercises  of  a  learner.  To  the 
student  the  bare  and  gritty  fact  is  indispensable.  No  one 
can  ever  be  an  artist  who  has  not  completely  mastered  it. 
But  it  is  only  the  A  B  C  of  art,  as  are  scales  to  a  musician, 
and  somersaults  to  an  acrobat.  Art  only  begins,  when  he 
who  can  present  facts  perfectly  comes  to  see  how  facts  may 
be  presented  with  feeling  and  imagination.  It  is  quite  true 
that  we  have  long  had  to  put  up  with  sentimental  feeling  and 
theatrical  imagination,  and  no  terms  need  be  kept  with  these 
sickly  abortions.  But  to  stamp  out  feeling  and  imagination 
altogether  is  an  error  just  as  gross.  And  in  order  to  sterilise 
feeling  and  imagination,  the  ambition  of  "modernity"  too 
often  seems  to  be,  to  lavish  conspicuous  agility  of  brush  on 
the  vulgarest  bit  of  fact  which  Earth  or  Man  can  present. 
That  is  —  le  vrai  Chic. 

Let  us  never  hold  parley  with  this  Gospel  of  grossness  and 
conceit.  Art  does  not  exist  that  its  professors  may  show 
their  skill  with  their  tools,  any  more  than  Literature  exists 
only  to  show  how  men  of  letters  can  handle  a  pen,  any  more 
than  Religion  exists  only  to  show  how  eloquently  preachers 
can  discourse  about  Heaven.  We  do  not  suffer  a  musician  to 
startle  his  audience  with  brilliant  fingering,  and  to  tell  them 


DECADENCE   IN   MODERN   ART  303 

that  it  is  no  business  of  theirs  whether  the  music  he  plays  be 
pleasing  or  commonplace.  Xor  would  we  listen  to  the  actor 
who  told  us  to  admire  his  elocution  or  his  make-up,  and  that 
it  was  all  one,  if  the  words  of  the  play  were  by  Shakespeare 
or  by  Cibber.  Yet  there  is  growing  up  a  new  order  of  painter 
whose  device  is  — "I  am  the  blessed  Glendoveer:  'tis  mine 
to  paint,  and  yours  to  gaze."  "Modernity"  is  a  fine  thing, 
and  new  efforts  are  very  much  to  be  encouraged.  But  even 
in  this  age  of  perpetual  change,  there  are  a  few  stable  canons 
of  philosophy  and  human  nature  left  untouched ;  and  if  they 
do  not  enter  into  the  curriculum  of  education  in  the  Life  Schools 
of  London  and  Paris,  they  have  not  been  entirely  dethroned. 
And  the  central  of  these  canons  is  this,  that  the  business  of 
Art  is  to  increase  the  beauty  and  the  happiness  of  human  life. 
Society  in  self-defence  must  put  its  foot  down  on  the  de- 
grading affectation  of  those  who  love  to  accentuate  all  that 
is  ugly  and  dreary  in  Nature  and  in  Man.  It  is  an  easier 
trade  than  adding  to  the  sum  of  beauty  and  happiness.  And 
it  is  unquestionably  a  newer  trade.  Their  squalid  paradox 
would  never  have  been  heard  of,  save  in  an  epoch  of  incessant 
change  and  of  chaos  in  opinion.  We  live  in  a  world  which 
is  growing  quite  delirious  for  something  new,  when  any 
revolt  is  hailed  as  a  new  dispensation.  A  man  has  only  to 
shout  out  loud  enough  the  new  Gospel  —  say,  "Murder 
a  fine  art,"  "The  true  beauty  of  dirt,"  or  "Ugliness  as  a  joy 
forever,"  —  and  he  straightway  gathers  round  him  a  sympa- 
thetic group.  The  system  of  Art  Exhibitions,  unknown  and 
impossible  in  any  great  age  of  Art,  with  its  competition  and 
its  advertising  tricks,  is  continually  feeding  the  vanity,  the 
jealousy,  the  cupidity  of  the  artist.  Nowhere  is  "the  struggle 
for  life"  more  acute.  It  begets  such  a  spirit  as  reigns  over 
Monte  Carlo  and  Wall  Street.  In  the  frantic  thirst  to  win, 
any  paradox  must  be  tried,  any  degradation  accepted.     Where 


304  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

at  most  a  hundred  men  in  all  are  so  born  as  to  be  worthy  of 
devoting  their  lives  to  Art,  ten  thousand  are  struggling  to  get 
heard  of,  and  to  have  their  canvases  bought.  Our  very  en- 
thusiasm to  get  a  New  Art,  we  know  not  whence  or  how,  is  so 
ill-directed  that  it  threatens  to  make  any  good  Art  impossible. 

Direction !  —  there  perhaps  lies  the  root  of  the  matter, 
and  the  source  of  our  danger.  The  essential  claim  of  "mod- 
ernity" is  to  assert  the  absolute  independence  of  Art,  and 
to  defy  any  sort  of  condition  of  limit,  whether  of  tradition, 
philosophy,  morality,  or  even  good  sense.  The  artist,  they 
tell  us,  is  an  angelic  being  who  is  a  law  unto  himself,  and  the 
world  has  merely  to  gaze  at  his  gambols,  and  to  enjoy  his 
enjoyments,  as  we  do  with  some  rare  and  diverting  beast  at 
a  show.  No  claim  can  be  more  preposterous.  There  is  no 
better  ground  that  Art  should  be  independent  of  all  other 
human  activity,  or  be  more  of  a  law  unto  itself,  than  that  lit- 
erature, or  industry,  or  politics  should  be.  Rational  civilisa- 
tion implies  that  all  forms  of  social  life  should  equally  conform 
to  human  experience,  should  work  on  some  recognised  prin- 
ciples, should  visibly  conduce  to  moral  and  social  progress. 

The  ancient  world  of  Art  was  inspired  by  its  beautiful 
and  inexhaustible  mythology.  The  medieval  world  of  Art 
was  inspired  by  its  sublime  and  pathetic  hagiology.  The 
Renascence  was  inspired  by  that  rich  and  joyous  Humanism, 
such  as  we  find  in  Michael  Angelo  and  Ariosto,  in  Spenser 
and  in  Shakespeare.  There  never  was,  and  there  never  will 
be,  any  epoch  of  great  Art  which  had  not  its  own  religious, 
social,  or  national  enthusiasm,  its  recognised  ideals  of  beauty 
and  happiness,  its  sense  that  the  duty  of  Art  was  to  minister 
to  a  nobler  life.  It  will  be  an  evil  day,  when  Art  comes  to 
mean  individual  caprice,  and  the  artist  means  a  clever  trades- 
man scheming  to  get  business  —  when  the  ideal  of  Beauty  is 
displaced  by  feats  of  manual  dexterity. 


DECADENCE    IN    MODERN    ART  305 

It  is  true  that  we  have  got  rid  of  any  pretension  whether  of 
Theology,  Church,  custom,  or  convention,  to  keep  Art  in 
leading-strings  and  to  crush  it  by  Egyptian  or  Byzantine 
formulas.  There  is  no  danger  of  returning  to  such  bar- 
barous slavery  of  a  superstitious  age.  But  to  rush  to  the 
extreme  of  handing  over  Art  to  individual  caprice  and  in- 
tellectual chaos  is  a  very  different  thing.  And  to  what  in- 
dividual caprices  are  we  asked  to  submit?  To  the  crude 
experiments  of  men,  the  great  majority  of  whom  have  never 
shown  a  sign  of  intellectual  culture  or  inspiring  ideas,  and 
whose  highest  ambition  is  to  get  their  " values"  right.  Cer- 
tainly the  "values"  must  be  right,  if  anything  is  to  be  done 
at  all,  just  as  the  notes  must  not  be  flat  if  we  are  to  play  or 
sing  to  any  purpose.  But  "values,"  and  notes  in  tune,  are 
but  the  A  B  C  of  the  art ;  and  when  they  are  got  right,  every- 
thing still  remains  to  be  done.  The  business  of  Art  is  to 
increase  the  beauty  and  the  happiness  of  human  life.  And 
until  the  craftsman  is  duly  abreast  of  all  that  is  known,  felt, 
and  thought  by  the  most  competent  minds  and  the  purest 
spirits  of  his  time  —  till  then,  he  remains  a  craftsman  and 
cannot  be  enrolled  in  the  noble  army  of  artists. 

The  old  religious  ideals,  the  old  poetic  ideals,  the  old  social 
ideals  are  certainly  passing  away,  and  we  are  all  waiting  till 
the  new  ideals  are  fully  formed,  and  ampler  canons  of  life 
and  beauty  are  revealed.  But  these  are  not  to  be  reached 
by  ingenious  experiments  with  a  palette,  or  by  the  random 
fancies  of  men  who  have  neither  wide  grasp  of  life  nor  serious 
intellectual  culture.  Our  painters  need  an  education  far 
larger  than  that  of  thirdLrate  poetry  and  comic  literature. 
And  in  the  meantime  desperate  efforts  to  do  something 
original  by  men  who  have  no  single  qualification  to  make 
them  intellectual  leaders,  are  certain  to  lead  us  still  farther 
astrav.     It  is  but  too  obvious  that  nearlv  all  that  which  served 


306  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

to  inspire  great  art  in  past  times  is  now  worn  out.  But  to 
preach  to  us  that  Art  needs  no  inspiration,  no  ideals,  no  guid- 
ance, no  thought,  no  beauty,  no  self-control  —  that  its  sole 
task  is  to  put  on  canvas  whatever  is  to  be  seen  —  this  is  the 
broad  road  that  leadeth  to  destruction. 

Let  me  not  be  taken  to  be  a  partisan  of  the  old  academic 
conventionality,  with  its  sickly  round  of  Dresden-china  puppets 
and  its  inane  assortment  of  stage  properties.  I  am  defending 
no  particular  school,  as  I  am  censuring  no  particular  person. 
We  have  amongst  us  painters  who,  if  their  results  fall  short 
of  their  aim,  have  a  fine  imagination,  a  true  sense  of  beauty, 
and  a  high  conception  of  the  dignity  and  the  conditions  of 
their  art.  We  have  such  men,  and  let  us  be  thankful  for 
them.  And,  if  they  are  but  a  few  in  the  midst  of  a  crowd  still 
given  over  to  conventional  routine  and  trivial  interests,  it  is 
simply  that  we  are  living  in  an  age  which  is  not  yet  great  in 
the  arts  of  form.  On  the  other  hand,  I  have  been  condemning 
no  single  person  and  no  single  group  or  school.  There  are 
several  groups  now  working  in  many  countries  who  are  trying 
most  different  methods,  and  preaching  most  different  doctrines. 
They  are  mostly  to  be  noticed  in  France,  which  is  now  the 
recognised  nidus  where  all  new  ideas  in  art  are  fermenting. 
In  many  of  these  efforts  after  a  new  type  I  recognise  some 
of  the  most  hopeful  signs  of  our  time.  Especially  is  that 
true  of  those  poetic  efforts  to  combine  fact,  beauty,  pathos, 
and  reality  in  the  aspect  of  common  things  and  lowly  lives 
— which  may  be  said  to  culminate  in  the  Angelus.  Here 
is  the  true  path.  But  among  these  new  groups,  raging  to 
be  "original,"  both  here  and  in  France,  there  are  some  to 
whom  beauty — nobleness  of  aspect  or  of  feeling  —  even 
decency — are  a  mockery  and  an  offence;  some  whose  ideal 
it  is  to  be  dull,  or  to  be  eccentric,  or  to  be  brutal.  For  such 
there  is  no  hope  in  this  world  or  the  next. 


IV 

ART  AND   SHODDY 

(From  "T!ie  Forum;'  N.Y.,  1893) 

Surprise  has  been  expressed  by  some  on  both  sides  of  the 
Altantic,  that  one  who  is  so  often  called  an  optimist,  and  who 
certainly  looks  forward  with  enthusiastic  hope  to  a  great  de- 
velopment of  every  form  of  human  life,  should  have  spoken 
of  a  certain  decadence  as  visible  to-day  in  our  poetry,  our 
romance,  our  art.  It  is  true  that  I  have  been  showing  ex- 
amples of  a  certain  slackness  in  creative  force,  sundry  morbid 
tendencies,  an  obvious  state  of  chaos,  and  some  false  prophets 
in  our  midst;  and  those  whose  business  in  the  great  Fair  is 
chiefly  to  beat  gongs  and  to  shout  to  the  crowd,  have  been 
calling  out,  "Here  is  a  wicked  pessimist,  here  is  a  cynic:  — 
hurry  up  you  poets,  novelists,  and  painters,  and  fall  upon  this 
sour  old  fellow,  who  tells  you  that  you  are  played  out,  and  have 
got  to  take  a  back  seat !"  And  more  to  the  same  effect  in 
the  peculiar  language  of  their  very  popular  art. 

With  all  the  convictions  which  I  hold  forcing  on  me  great 
hopes  in  the  ultimate  future,  any  sense  of  disappointment  I 
may  feel  in  the  present  is  only  a  passing  mood,  and  relates  to 
special  causes  at  work  for  a  time.  We  live,  it  is  plain,  in  an 
age  of  transition;  we  are  trying  new  lines  of  activity;  and 
are  making  some  crucial  experiments.  We  are  rapidly 
casting  off  traditions  and  beliefs,  and  are  eagerly  searching 
about  for  new  beliefs,  new  canons  —  which  it  is  but  too 
obvious  that  we  have  not  found,  or  at  least  that  we  cannot 

307 


308  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

agree  that  we  have  found.  Many  cry,  Lo  here,  Lo  there ! 
many  shout,  Eureka;  but  the  world  smiles  and  shakes  its 
head,  and  waits.  I  have  tried  to  point  out  that  we  must  wait 
a  little  longer,  and  that  many  an  Eureka  is  decidedly  pre- 
mature. And  I  will  now  indicate  some  of  the  adverse  causes 
which  retard  us,  and  why  we  have  need  of  caution  and  patience 
in  our  forecast.  With  an  unshaken  confidence  in  the  resources 
of  human  nature,  whatever  I  see  to  dishearten  us  has  reference 
to  none  but  temporary  causes. 

Again,  some  of  those  to  whom  I  fear  I  am  known  but  in 
a  very  distant  and  casual  way,  have  wondered  that  I  should 
take  any  interest  in  poetry,  romance,  or  art;  and  how  one 
whose  main  business  for  thirty  years  past  has  lain  with  the 
doctrines  of  Auguste  Comte,  should  now  be  presuming  to 
talk  about  verses  and  novels  and  painting.  So  far  as  Comte  is 
concerned,  nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  vast  importance 
which  he  assigns  to  imaginative  power,  so  that  in  his  Library 
of  chosen  books  he  gives  one-fifth  to  poetry,  romance,  and  art, 
and  in  his  Calendar  of  chosen  heroes  he  has  given  to  these 
nearly  one-fourth  of  the  whole.  High,  broad,  and  pure  Art, 
in  all  its  various  modes  whether  of  words,  of  form,  or  of 
sounds,  is  bound  up  with  the  nobility  of  human  life.  De- 
cadence in  art  is  a  sure  sign  of  some  organic  change  taking 
place  in  our  moral  sense.  Healthy  art  is  the  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  an  inward  and  spiritual  growth.  And  men  who 
would  smile  to  be  told  that  our  age  is  too  eager  after  wealth, 
too  prone  to  worship  public  success,  and  greedy  after  coarse 
forms  of  luxury,  are  moved  when  they  see  these  moral  dis- 
orders poisoning  the  very  arts  of  daily  life. 

There  are  very  plain  tendencies  of  a  general  kind  which 
are  not  favourable  to  the  higher  forms  of  imaginative  work. 
If  there  is  one  thing  which  is  more  than  another  peculiar  to 
our  own  age,  it  is  that  it  is  an  age  of  specialism.     In  science, 


ART   AND    SHODDY  309 

in  sociology,  as  in  practical  things,  the  most  curious  sub- 
division of  employment  has  become  the  rule.  Histories  of  a 
single  country  over  a  few  years  fill  many  volumes,  and  occupy 
exactly  the  same  time  in  composition  as  the  events  occupied 
in  transaction.  A  great  reputation  in  natural  history  is 
achieved  by  a  life-long  study  of  one  species  of  coleoptera. 
He  is  a  very  learned  man  who  knows  even  the  literature  of 
a  single  nation  and  of  any  moderate  number  of  centuries. 
A  painter  spends  a  long  and  laborious  life  in  reproducing  one 
class  of  scene  or  subject.  I  will  not  say  that  specialism  is 
otherwise  than  essential,  nor  am  I  prepared  to  deny  that  it  is 
the  strength  of  our  knowledge.  But  it  is  most  antipathetic 
to  Art.  Art  is  eminently  synthetic.  It  combines,  trans- 
figures, and  crystallises  everything  it  touches.  Art  means 
unity  of  conception;  and  specialism  means  disparate  and 
dispersive  observation. 

It  is  vain  then  to  look  for  any  very  great  art,  either  in  litera- 
ture or  in  the  special  arts  of  form,  under  the  reign  of  uni- 
versal Specialism.  Music  and  poetry  are  not  so  closely  depend- 
ent on  the  visible  present.  But  prose  romance,  the  drama, 
painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  even  acting  and  dress,  can- 
not free  themselves  from  the  environment  of  dry  and  precise 
rule,  of  minute  subdivision  of  opinion  and  knowledge.  Om- 
niscient criticism,  fastidious  taste,  microscopic  learning, 
surround  them  with  the  cold  curious  stare  of  British  dowagers 
in  a  drawing-room.  Giotto,  Leonardo,  Michael  Angelo, 
Holbein,  Raffaelle,  were  architects,  sculptors,  or  decorators, 
as  well  as  painters:  Velazquez,  Rubens,  Rembrandt,  were 
men  of  splendid  culture  and  spacious  life,  who  could  clothe 
every  aspect  of  the  visible  world  with  a  deep  glow  of  meaning 
and  beauty.  An  "artist"  in  the  cinque-cento,  meant  one  who 
saw  human  life  in  a  higher  light  than  common  men,  and  who 
could   teach    men    the   dignity   of   their   own   existence.     If 


3IO  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Raffaelle  to-morrow  were  to  paint  a  new  "School  of  Athens" 
a  hundred  critics  would  tell  him  that  his  archaeology  was  all 
wrong,  and  his  Greek  hardly  up  to  pass  in  the  "Little-Go." 
And  as  to  the  historic  pictures  of  Veronese  and  Rubens,  every 
schoolboy  would  be  laughing  at  some  anachronism,  and  would 
write  to  the  Times  to  show  that  the  Romans  knew  nothing 
of  cheiton  and  chlamys,  nor  did  Greeks  ever  wear  paluda- 
menlum  and  caligce. 

We  know  so  much  about  the  history  of  architecture  that 
we  build  an  Imperial  Institute  or  a  World's  Fair  with  many 
different  "styles"  pieced  together,  like  a  patchwork  quilt, 
as  if  they  were  geologic  specimens  in  a  glass  case.  Our 
historic  tragedies  are  wonderful  lessons  in  the  comparative 
History  of  Costume;  and  Mr.  Irving,  if  not  always  audible 
as  an  elocutionist,  is  usually  faultless  as  an  antiquarian. 
One  cannot  have  everything  at  once.  Vast  and  exact  learn- 
ing, critical  purism,  and  dispersive  studies  are  fatal  to  the 
forked  lightning  flash  of  great  art.  We  have  still  men  nobly 
struggling  to  give  some  unity  to  art  —  Sir  Frederick  Leighton, 
William  Morris,  G.  F.  Watts,  Whistler,  and  others  who  do 
something  more  than  turn  out  replicas  of  a  bit  of  blue  sea  or 
a  favourite  cow.  We  shall  no  doubt  again  have  an  age  when 
Synthesis  will  weigh  more  than  Analysis,  and  Conception  of 
the  Whole  more  than  Observation  of  the  Parts.  We  shall 
have  again  an  age  of  coherent  ideas: — and  when  we  have 
that,  we  shall  have  another  age  of  Great  Art  (1893). 

Democracy,  again,  is  a  blessed  word,  the  peculiar  boast  of 
our  age  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  as  certain  to  grow  as 
anything  else  on  this  earth.  I  am  assuredly  not  one  who  sees 
with  alarm  the  ever-growing  influence  of  the  masses  and 
their  increased  share  of  the  world's  products.  Far  other- 
wise: for  to  me  civilisation  means  nothing  else  than  the 
opening  to  the  whole  mass  of  the  people  the  culture,  the 


ART   AND   SHODDY  31I 

power,  the  welfare  which  are  now  not  so  particularly  well 
used  by  the  fortunate  few.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that 
this  distant  Utopia  has  not  yet  been  reached,  and  that  the 
stage  of  transition  has  its  own  defects.  It  is  but  too  pain- 
fully obvious  that  the  great  public  has  not  yet  acquired  a 
mature  and  refined  taste  in  matters  of  grace  and  beauty, 
and  has  but  scant  leisure  to  enjoy  that  ideal  in  the  actual 
which  we  call  Art.  The  old  feudal  organisation  of  society 
with  a  wealthy  and  leisured  class  at  the  top,  amidst  all  its 
social  and  economic  evils,  did  conduce  to  a  certain  standard 
of  culture  and  a  practical  pursuit  after  beautiful  things.  It 
was  very  far  from  being  the  best  or  purest  mode  of  stimulat- 
ing the  productions  of  genius.  But  it  did  much  in  various 
ages  of  the  past  to  promote  art;  and  it  cannot  be  said  that 
Democracy  has  yet  been  able  to  fill  its  part  with  entire 
success. 

Nor  is  it  Democracy  of  the  age  of  Pericles  or  of  the  Italian 
Republics  in  the  Middle  Ages,  but  a  Democracy  combined 
with  an  ever-grinding  industrialism,  that  wrings  the  last 
ounce  from  the  labour  of  millions,  while  it  suddenly  heaps 
up  vast  wealth  in  the  hands  of  the  ignorant  and  the  mean. 
How  can  the  imagination  flourish  in  such  a  world?  It  is 
wonderful  that  poetry  has  done  so  much :  —  but  the  poet,  as 
I  have  said  throughout,  like  the  musician,  lives  more  in  a 
dream-world  of  his  own,  which  is  impossible  in  the  arts  of 
form.  The  architect,  the  painter,  the  sculptor,  the  designer, 
the  decorator  in  every  kind,  has  to  work  in  a  grim  world, 
where  the  journeyman  has  small  interest  or  enjoyment,  ex- 
cept in  earning  his  day's  wage,  where  beauty  and  grace  are 
treated  as  cruel  hindrances  to  the  rapid  accumulation  of 
fortune;  and  where  boundless  wealth  is  often  placed  in  the 
absolute  control  of  men  who  find  little  delight  in  it  except  as 
it  ministers  to  caprice  and  ostentation.     Pharaoh  tells  the 


312  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

children  of  Israel  that  they  are  idle,  and  shall  have  no  straw, 
and  yet  shall  deliver  their  tale  of  bricks.  Genius  must  be 
free:  Art  must  have  a  light  heart.  To  deliver  a  tale  of 
bricks  to  taskmasters  revolts  its  inmost  soul,  and  is  ever 
beyond  its  force. 

This  indeed  is  the  real  root  of  the  mischief  —  that  Art  in 
all  its  forms  is  become  a  mere  article  of  commerce.  We  buy 
works  of  imagination,  like  plate  or  jewelry,  at  so  much  the 
ounce  or  the  carat ;  and  we  expect  the  creator  of  such  works 
to  make  his  fortune  like  the  ''creator"  of  ball  costumes,  or 
of  a  dinner  service.  We  have  got  rather  into  what 
logicians  call  "a  vicious  circle" — the  buyers  crying  out, 
"Give  us  a  really  great  work  of  art,  and  we  will  pay 
whatever  you  ask!"  — the  artist  replying,  "Guarantee  us  a 
handsome  income  for  life,  and  in  good  time  we  will  give  you 
an  immortal  work !"  Neither  of  these  proposals  is  accepted, 
nor  can  they  be  accepted.  The  artist  has  to  boil  his  pot,  and 
now-a-days  he  likes  his  pottage  to  be  as  savoury  and  costly  as 
that  of  his  neighbours,  and  he  has  not  the  leisure  or  the  wealth 
to  meditate  for  years  on  a  truly  immortal  work.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  buyer,  who  is  usually  a  keen  business  man, 
not  unnaturally  says,  "I  must  have  value  for  my  money, 
and  to  keep  an  artist  in  luxury,  whilst  he  is  meditating  a 
big  thing,  is  not  my  idea  of  business!" 

All  buying  and  selling  involves  in  some  form  or  other  a 
market.  And  hence  the  curious  institution  of  periodical 
Art  Exhibitions.  I  do  not  hesitate  to  put  down  very  much 
in  our  deficiency  in  art-sense  to  this  demoralising  habit. 
When  the  practice  began,  and  it  did  not  begin  until  all  the 
great  traditions  in  art  were  exhausted  and  all  the  great  artists 
had  become  Old  Masters,  when  the  practice  was  fresh,  and 
its  uses  seemed  obvious,  there  was  a  priori  much  to  be  hoped 
from  it.     Aspiring  genius  was  to  place  its  productions  side 


ART   AND    SHODDY  313 

by  side  for  comparison;  men  of  taste  and  wide  experience 
were  to  be  the  judges;  the  great  public  was  to  be  educated; 
and  buyers  and  sellers  were  to  meet  in  open  mart.  How 
different  the  actual  result !  It  was  not  genius,  so  much  as 
industry,  knack,  and  smartness,  that  covered  the  Exhibition 
walls.  The  "works  of  art"  were  crammed  together  like 
herrings  in  a  barrel,  and  their  diversity  of  tone  and  subject 
produced  the  same  impression  of  discord  on  the  eye  as  the 
ear  would  feel  if  a  thousand  instruments  in  one  big  orchestra 
were  all  set  to  perform  a  different  tune.  The  violin  trilled 
out  a  sonata,  the  flute  played  a  jig,  the  cornet  rang  out 
Yankee  Doodle,  and  the  drum  boomed  forth  the  "Dead 
March"  in  Saul. 

The  judges  too  began  to  wrangle ;  they  called  each  other 
bad  names,  and  devoted  the  works  of  art  they  disliked  to  the 
hangman,  or  declared  that  their  own  friends  were  far  greater 
than  Raffaelle  and  Michael  Angelo.  There  were  cliques, 
sets,  favouritism,  murmurs  of  jobbery,  and  violent  recrimi- 
nation. The  great  public,  puzzled  by  the  diversities  of  the 
critics,  unfortunately  took  to  develop  its  own  taste  unaided; 
and  it  consolidated  its  opinion  into  a  love  for  commonplace, 
for  the  vulgar,  the  silly,  the  conventional.  The  middleman, 
alas !  soon  stepped  in,  as  he  always  does,  when  money  is  to 
be  made,  and  he  soon  became  the  absolute  "boss"  of  the 
whole  show.  Artists  did  not  sell  their  works  to  amateurs  and 
collectors  —  but  to  the  enterprising  middleman,  to  whom 
they  were  years  in  debt.  Collectors  did  not  buy  works 
from  the  artist  —  but  from  the  middleman,  who  had  bought 
up  in  the  studio  half-finished  pieces  at  half  rates;  who 
practically  dictated  to  the  artist  what  he  should  paint,  and 
how ;  who  dictated  to  the  collector  what  he  ought  to  buy  and 
for  how  much;  and  who  practically  educated  the  public 
as  to  what  it  liked  or  disliked.     And  Art  became  as  much  a 


314  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

matter  of  professional  dealing  as  a  corner  in  pork,  or  a  Bear 
operation  in  Erie  bonds. 

The  unlucky  expedient  of  competitive  Exhibitions  has  had 
many  indirect  ways  of  pulling  down  both  artist  and  pub- 
lic. In  a  crowd  of  indiscriminate  works  it  was  essential  to 
secure  attention  from  the  jaded  visitor  who  had  in  his  weary 
hand  a  catalogue  of  some  four  thousand  works.  To  secure 
attention  the  obvious  course  had  been  shown  with  marked 
success  by  the  vendors  of  rival  soaps  and  pills.  Flesh  and 
blood,  a  starving  family,  and  the  laudable  desire  to  have  the 
outward  marks  of  successful  industry,  did  the  rest.  The 
dealer  fixed  the  ruling  fashion  and  an  elaborate  schedule  of 
prices,  much  as  he  does  in  brocades  and  carpets.  The  great 
bulk  of  artists,  painters,  sculptors,  architects,  designers,  — 
yes!  let  us  add  poets,  dramatists,  novelists,  essayists,  and 
journalists,  —  submitted  to  the  inevitable ;  and  Genius,  which 
in  the  heyday  of  generous  youth  had  dreamed  that  it  would 
live  only  to  paint,  to  carve,  to  write,  fell  back  into  the  ignoble 
crowd  which  paints,  carves,  and  writes  only  to  live. 

The  camel  of  Holy  Writ  will  have  passed  through  the 
eye  of  the  needle  long  before  Supply  and  Demand  will  ever 
have  succeeded  in  creating  a  great  art.  And  men  will  be 
gathering  grapes  of  thorns  and  figs  of  thistles  the  day  that 
Art  Exhibitions  promote  immortal  works.  For  consider 
how  completely  every  noble  work  that  we  know  has  its  own 
peculiar  setting  of  place,  time,  person,  and  inspiration.  Take 
that  type  of  great  art,  the  Parthenon  at  Athens.  Every 
statue,  metope,  and  bit  of  frieze  had  its  place  in  the  glorious 
whole,  and  would  be  vapid  or  unintelligible  out  of  it.  The 
State  chose,  employed,  and  paid  the  artist,  and  the  chief  of 
the  State  hung  over  his  work  with  love  and  pride,  as  if  the 
artist  were  the  best  of  his  own  colleagues.  The  whole  was 
to  the  honour  of  the  great  Patron  Deity  of  the  State,  and  the 


ART   AND   SHODDY  315 

completion  of  it  was  a  sort  of  National  Sacrament  and  Thanks- 
giving Day. 

That  was  the  most  perfect  and  typical  work  of  art  that 
this  earth  ever  saw.  What  would  it  have  been  if  "Theseus/' 
and  "Ilissus,"  "Centaurs  and  Lapithae,"  had  been  stuck 
in  galleries  in  the  midst  of  Busts  of  a  prominent  citizen, 
dancing-girls,  children  at  play,  and  the  like,  numbered  4576 
in  the  Official  Catalogue,  "the  work  of  Pheidias,  the  studios 
Acropolis,  price  to  be  had  of  the  secretary;  if  in  Parian 
marble  25  percent  extra"?  The  "Theseus"  and  "Ilissus" 
look  forlorn  enough,  as  it  is,  in  their  stately  exile  in  our  Elgin 
gallery  in  London.  How  would  they  look  in  the  Paris  Salon, 
when  poor  Pheidias  came  day  by  day  to  the  office  to  ask 
if  some  rich  soap-boiler  or  pork-dealer  had  given  him  his 
price  ? 

This,  it  is  true,  was  the  highest  moment  of  human  art, 
when  everything  combined  in  its  favour.  But  much  the 
same  may  be  said  of  all  that  the  world  has  agreed  to  honour. 
Think  of  that  procession  of  Cimabue's  "Madonna"  at 
Florence,  the  scene  which  Frederick  Leighton  so  well  painted, 
—  I  often  think  it  the  happiest  subject  in  modern  art,  the 
young  Giotto  beside  his  master  and  the  youthful  Dante 
looking  on  with  delight,  —  would  it  be  the  same  to  us  if  the 
"Madonna"  had  been  ordered  by  a  dealer  and  hung  in 
the  Exhibition  with  bits  of  genre  and  studies  from  the  nude? 
It  hangs  now  in  Santa  Maria  Novella,  as  it  has  hung  for 
some  six  hundred  years,  and  seems  to  sanctify  the  Church, 
as  it  gave  a  new  name  to  the  Borgo  Allegro.  Would  it  be 
all  the  same  if  it  had  been  "the  picture  of  the  year,"  and 
bought  to  adorn  a  contractor's  mansion?  Imagine  Giotto 
at  work  in  the  Arena  Chapel  at  Padua  on  his  great  Bible 
history,  with  Dante  watching  his  work,  suggesting  subjects, 
and    inspiring    him    with    grand    "motives."     Or    imagine 


316  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Michael  Angelo,  shutting  himself  up  in  the  Medici  Chapel 
or  in  the  Sistine  Chapel,  and  communing  with  the  mighty 
spirits  of  old  alone.  Or  again,  take  Raffaelle  in  the  Vatican, 
or  Tintoretto  in  San  Rocco.  What  would  these  works  be 
in  the  screaming  dissonance  of  a  modern  gallery,  exposed  to 
the  higgling  of  the  market,  and  designed  to  catch  the  acci- 
dental whim  of  some  lucky  investor?  Everything  that  we 
love  in  art  had  its  own  time,  place,  occasion,  inspiration. 
Titian,  Velazquez,  Rubens,  and  Vandyke,  painted  noble 
gentlemen  and  ladies  in  the  costumes  in  which  they  lived, 
to  hang  in  their  own  halls,  amidst  artistic  surroundings  of 
absolute  harmony.  Your  R.A.  to-day  paints  a  bill-dis- 
counter in  a  red  hunting-suit  and  breeches  and  a  fur  top  coat ; 
he  charges  him  a  thousand  guineas;  and  the  bill-discounter 
is  very  proud.  Raffaelle  and  Bartolommeo  painted  Saints 
and  Madonnas  to  place  over  altars ;  Veronese  painted  sump- 
tuous groups  for  Venetian  palaces;  Rembrandt  painted  the 
men  and  the  scenes  amongst  which  his  life  was  passed,  exactly 
as  he  saw  them,  and  for  those  who  loved  them.  We  have  to 
rack  our  brains  for  novel  subjects,  and  first  and  foremost, 
we  have  to  satisfy  the  dealer. 

I  know  they  say,  "Why  talk  about  Raffaelle  and  Titian, 
who  are  of  course  beyond  all  comparison:  there  are  very 
good  painters  now,  even  if  they  do  not  belong  to  the  grand 
school."  And  so,  they  say  in  literature,  "Do  not  compare 
us  with  Milton  and  Shelley,  Fielding  and  Scott :  we  have  our 
own  qualities,  and  ought  not  to  be  judged  by  classical  stand- 
ards." But  this  is  the  easy  road  towards  decline  —  to  lower 
the  standard  of  excellence.  The  one  thing  essential  is  — 
to  keep  a  high  ideal  of  perfection  steadily  before  us.  Our 
achievement  may  fall  short  of  our  aim :  but  if  our  standard  is 
true  and  lofty,  we  may  end  by  reaching  it.  Counsel  and 
criticism  can  do  little  enough,  and,  perhaps,  least  of  all  to 


ART   AND    SHODDY  317 

help  art.  But  this  they  can  do.  They  can  remind  both 
public  and  worker  of  the  higher  levels  to  which  art  may  rise 
and  has  risen.  They  can  warn  us  never  to  rest  satisfied  with 
any  lower  level.  Perfection  and  the  highest  must  be  always 
before  our  eyes.  And  those  who,  in  the  enjoyment  of  some 
pleasant  fashion  of  the  time,  or  in  genuine  admiration  for 
some  popular  book,  work  of  art,  or  style  that  exactly  hits  the 
mood  of  the  hour,  or  the  mood  of  a  set  —  need  to  be  reminded 
how  far  short  of  the  best  it  is. 

The  mere  thought  of  an  ideal  perfection  is  enough  to 
convince  us  how  impossible  is  any  high  type  of  art  under  a 
system  of  trade  and  money-making.  The  pecuniary  stand- 
ard, which  more  or  less  affects  every  form  of  intellectual  and 
spiritual  activity,  seems  to  have  a  peculiarly  deadening  influ- 
ence upon  the  visual  arts.  It  is  due,  no  doubt,  to  their  direct 
and  vivid  effect  on  the  personal  senses,  and  to  the  close  con- 
nection they  must  always  have  with  the  external  adornment 
of  life.  The  arts  are  necessarily  a  part  of  luxury,  public  or 
private.  And,  now  that  private  luxury  has  almost  completely 
superseded  public  magnificence,  the  result  on  art  is  disastrous. 
Art  flourished  in  the  days  when,  as  the  Roman  poet  says, 

Privatus  Mis  census  erat  brevis, 
Commune  magnum  — 

Such  was  Athens  in  the  age  of  Pheidias,  Florence  in  the  age 
of  Lorenzo,  and  Venice,  when  her  Doge's  Palace  was  built 
and  adorned.  But,  in  an  age  when  fortunes  are  made, 
either  by  pleasing  vast  numbers  of  persons,  and  those  for  the 
most  part  half-taught  and  rude  of  habit,  or  else  by  pleasing 
those  who  have  amassed  fortunes  and  nothing  else  —  the 
pursuit  of  fortune  is  the  ruin  of  art. 

I  may  be  asked,  what  practical  measures  I  would  advocate 
to  remedy  this  state  of  things,  a  state  of  things  which  seems 


318  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

but  another  illustration  of  the  old  saying  —  that  "the  love 
of  money  is  the  root  of  all  evil."  There  is  no  practical 
remedy:  and  my  object  in  what  I  have  said  about  poetry, 
literature,  and  art,  is  simply  to  insist  that  there  is  no  practical 
remedy  —  or  none  of  the  immediate  and  direct  kind.  The 
only  true  remedy  is  that  contained  in  the  Apostle's  words  to 
Timothy:  —  "They  that  will  be  rich  fall  into  temptation  and 
a  snare,  and  into  many  foolish  and  hurtful  lusts,  which  drown 
men  in  destruction  and  perdition."  And  it  is  as  true  for  the 
artist  or  the  poet  to-day  as  it  is  for  the  divine  and  the  disciple, 
as  it  was  true  for  the  Apostle's  own  son  in  the  faith,  whom  he 
had  left  in  Ephesus:  —  "But  thou,  flee  these  things;  and 
follow  after  righteousness,  godliness,  faith,  love,  patience, 
meekness."  Men  hear  these  words  in  church  on  a  Sunday, 
and  for  the  next  six  days  in  the  week  they  go  to  'change  and 
to  their  office,  and  contend  for  the  turn  of  the  market  like 
hungry  tigers  at  the  hour  of  meal.  "They  that  will  be  rich 
fall  into  temptation  and  a  snare,  and  into  many  foolish  and 
hurtful  lusts."  And  no  snare  is  so  cunning  as  that  spread  for 
those  that  will  be  rich  in  fame  and  money  by  their  skill  in 
art. 

I  took  up  my  pen  in  order  to  show  that  this  matter  of  aim- 
lessness  in  art  is  at  bottom  a  moral  question  —  as  all  important 
matters  must  be  —  nay,  is  in  truth  a  religious  question,  far 
more  than  one  of  technique  or  style  or  school.  It  may  not  be 
religious  in  the  sense  of  the  ordinary  pulpit :  and  so  much  the 
worse  for  the  ordinary  pulpit.  The  pulpits  in  vogue  utter 
little  enough  to  instruct  the  artist  how  he  may  use  his  talent 
in  a  worthy  way,  and  the  preacher  would  be  scandalised  if 
he  were  asked  to  touch  such  mundane  themes.  But  all  the 
same,  it  is  the  business  of  religion  and  of  social  ethics  to  teach 
the  noble  use  of  imaginative  gifts,  and  how  a  pure  and  lofty 
art  may  minister  to  the  beauty  of  a  noble  life.     If  the  churches 


ART    AND    SHODDY 


3l9 


do  not  know  what  this  means,  I  am  sorry  for  them.  This 
is  not  the  place,  nor  have  I  space  left  here,  to  explain  all  I 
mean,  when  I  say  that  art  is  a  mode  of  religion,  and  can 
flourish  only  under  the  inspiration  of  living  and  practical 
religion.  In  the  meantime,  I  would  say  but  one  word  to  the 
ingenious  youth  who  aspires  to  be  an  artist  that  he  should 
shudder  to  become  a  tradesman,  that  he  take  up  his  high 
calling  with  "love,  patience,  meekness"  — that  he  hold  fast 
by  all  that  is  pure,  all  that  is  beautiful,  all  that  is  broadly 
human. 


V 

THOUGHTS   ABOUT   EDUCATION 

{From  "The  Forum;'  N.Y.,  1891) 

It  is  with  no  light  heart  that  I  act  on  the  wish  of  the  editor 
that  I  should  set  down  my  experience  of  education  as  now 
carried  on  in  the  Old  World.  I  cannot  forget  that  I  have 
had  to  take  part  in  education  in  one  form  or  other  for  nearly 
forty  years;  that  I  have  been  responsible  for  the  education 
of  sons  of  my  own ;  that  I  have  for  years  past  joined  in  the 
discussions  and  conferences  on  this  question :  and  now  I 
feel  at  times  that  we  are  further  off  the  right  path  than  ever, 
as  if  our  whole  system  were  a  failure.  There  are  hours 
when  I  feel  about  education  nothing  but  this,  —  wipe  it  out, 
and  let  us  begin  it  all  afresh. 

It  has  long  been  a  favourite  idea  of  mine  that  many  things 
work  delightfully  for  good  whilst  they  are  spontaneous  and 
unorganised ;  but  when  they  are  stereotyped  into  an  elaborate 
art,  and  evolve  a  special  profession  or  trade  of  experts,  they 
produce  unexpected  failures,  and  end  in  more  harm  than 
good.  Holidays,  excursions,  exhibitions,  authorship,  preach- 
ing, temperance,  —  a  thousand  good  things  and  virtuous 
gifts,  —  end  in  monster  jubilees,  world  fairs,  book-making, 
pulpit-trading,  fanatical  tyranny,  and  other  invasions  of 
peace  and  freedom.  And  few  things  suffer  more  than  edu- 
cation by  passing  into  stereotyped  schemes  set  forth  in  the 
formulas  of  the  day,  and  expounded  by  professional  experts. 

320 


THOUGHTS    ABOUT    EDUCATION  32 1 

A  uniform  system  of  education  is  a  form  of  madness  akin 
to  a  project  for  making  men  of  one  size  or  one  weight. 

After  forty  years  or  so  I  am  coming  round  to  think  that 
the  less  we  systematise  education,  dogmatise  about  it,  even 
talk  about  it,  the  better.  A  good  education  is  a  general  mental  1 
and  moral  condition,  like  a  virtuous  nature  and  a  healthy 
body ;  and  we  are  all  treating  it  as  if  it  were  a  special  art  or 
a  technical  craft,  and  could  be  taught  like  playing  the  violin, 
or  tested  like  jumping.  There  is  no  test  of  a  good  education, 
and  no  specific  for  making  a  young  mind  active  and  full. 
Minds  are  far  more  various  than  physical  constitutions,  and 
infinitely  more  subtle.  Education,  in  a  true  and  high  sense, 
implies  the  development  of  the  mind  to  its  perfection  in  a 
natural  and  complete  manner ;  and  yet,  whilst  every  one  can 
see  the  quackery  involved  in  any  art  of  universal  health,  we 
are  still  multiplying  examinations,  educational  boards,  syl- 
labi, schemes,  and  royal  roads  to  the  making  of  fine  minds. 

If  there  is  one  thing  on  which  all  the  great  reformers  of 
man's  social  life  have  insisted  more  than  another,  it  is  the 
essential  unity  of  education,  in  its  moral,  mental,  and  active 
side,  and  the  hopelessness  of  trying  to  build  up  a  truly  organic 
education  out  of  many  kinds  of  merely  sectional  instruction. 
It  is  like  seeking  to  cure  a  case  of  nervous  collapse  by  drugs. 
All  real  philosophers  tell  us  that  man  is  a  complex,  subtle, 
but  single  organism,  which  we  can  no  more  take  to  pieces 
and  treat  in  segments  than  we  can  cut  up  his  body.  If  there 
be  such  things  as  morality  and  religion,  and  if  anything  can 
be  said  or  done  by  way  of  inculcating  them,  or  applying  them 
to  life,  then  education  cannot  be  severed  from  morality  and 
religion,  and  all  real  education  must  be  inspired  by  religion 
as  well  as  morality.  Yet  here  we  all  are  vowing  that  religion 
shall  not  meddle  with  education,  and  that  morality  belongs 
to  a  set  of  influences  quite  apart  from  schools  and  universities. 

Y 


.--' 


322  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

No  one  will  suspect  me  of  sighing  for  the  old  exclusive 
religious  tests  of  orthodoxy,  or  of  wishing  to  see  our  academies 
reformed  on  the  pattern  of  a  Jesuit  college.  I  am  not  likely 
to  forget  that  for  me  and  for  mine  no  place  would  be  found 
in  any  theological  seminary.  I  recognise  the  necessity, 
therefore,  as  things  stand,  of  eliminating  religion  from  our 
secular  education;  and,  as  I  do  not  understand  what  sys- 
tematic morality  can  mean  if  it  have  no  religious  direction 
at  all,  I  am  bound  to  recognise  further  that  the  moral  part  in 
our  current  scholastic  systems  has  to  be  of  a  very  formal, 
general,  and  simple  kind.  But  since,  in  a  truly  normal 
education,  religion  is  the  very  essence  of  noble  work,  and 
since  morality  apart  from  religion  is  a  rattling  of  dry  bones, 
all  that  we  can  do  in  education  must  be  mere  provisional 
makeshift. 

We  ask  too  much  from  education,  we  make  too  much  of 
it,  we  monstrously  over-organise  it,  and  we  cruelly  overload 
it.  Education  can  do  for  us  infinitely  less  than  we  have 
come  to  expect ;  and  what  little  it  can  do  is  on  the  condition 
that  it  be  left  simple,  natural,  and  free.  I  have  known  very 
few  men  who  were  made  into  anything  great  entirely  by  their 
education;  and  I  have  known  a  good  many  who  were  en- 
tirely ruined  by  it,  and  were  finally  turned  out  as  pedants, 
prigs,  or  idiots.  Struggling  to  win  prizes  in  examination, 
thinking  always  about  the  style  current  to-day,  being  put 
through  the  regulation  mill,  and  poring  over  some  little  corner 
of  knowledge  for  some  material  object  —  may  give  a  one-sided 
appearance  of  learning  with  nothing  behind  it,  will  turn 
out  mechanical  eccentricities  like  calculating-machines,  may 
change  an  honest  fellow  into  a  selfish,  dull  brute,  or  leave  a 
weak  brain  softened  and  atrophied  for  life.  And  the  more 
we  organise  education,  the  greater  is  the  risk  of  our  finding 
this  result. 


THOUGHTS    ABOUT    EDUCATION  323 

All  that  education  can  really  give  is  this :  it  can  supply  the 
opportunities  of  self-culture ;  hold  forth  new  standards  and 
ideals  to  aim  at ;  it  can  bring  the  budding  mind  into  contact 
with  a  formed  and  mature  mind ;  shed  over  the  young  spirit 
the  inspiring  glow  of  some  rare  and  beautiful  intelligence. 
It  can  open  to  the  learner  the  door  into  the  vestibule  of  the 
great  Library  of  the  World's  Wisdom;  but  it  cannot  cram 
its  contents  into  his  brain.  It  can  show  him  a  superior 
intellect  in  the  act  of  collecting  and  distilling  his  materials. 
It  can  suggest,  explain,  correct,  and  guide  in  a  very  general 
and  occasional  way;  but  it  cannot  teach  vigorous  thinking, 
or  thrust  coherent  knowledge  into  a  raw  mind,  as  a  plough- 
boy  can  with  trouble  be  taught  to  write,  or  to  remember  the 
multiplication  table.  The  "  three  R's,"  the  merely  mechanical 
instruments  of  education,  may  be  thus  rammed  in  by  sheer 
labour  (perhaps  they  must  be  so  taught).  But  when  we 
speak  of  "education,"  we  are  here  meaning  the  higher  train- 
ing professed  to  be  given  in  the  superior  colleges  and  schools. 
And  in  these  it  is  often  a  cruel  injury  to  a  moderate  or  dull 
mind  to  have  scraps  of  "prepared"  information,  and  pep- 
tonised  decoctions  of  science,  hammered  into  its  cells,  or  to 
have  essays,  poems,  and  systems  of  philosophy,  "wrung," 
as  Milton  says,  "like  blood  from  the  nose." 

The  ideal  education  (as  imagined,  for  instance,  in  the 
academies  of  Plato  and  Aristotle)  would  be  such  that  a  body 
of  students,  attracted  by  a  great  love  of  knowledge,  should 
gather  from  time  to  time  round  some  great  teacher,  till  they 
had  touch  of  his  informing  mind,  grasped  his  method  of 
thought,  felt  inspiration  from  his  typical  ideas,  asked  of  him 
questions,  and  answered  his  questions  to  them ;  and  then 
freely  went  their  own  way  to  work  out  for  themselves  his 
suggestions,  and  left  him  free  to  think,  to  observe,  experiment, 
or  write,  until  he  was  again  ready  to  teach.     Here  is  a  creative 


324  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

mind  lighting  up  other  nascent  minds,  whom  a  sense  of  duty, 
and  religious  eagerness  to  behold  the  face  of  the  great  goddess 
Truth,  have  freely  gathered  together  in  the  common  desire 
to  develop  fitly  each  his  own  most  diverse  nature.  That 
is  an  ideal  education ;  though  we  all  admit  it  is  impracticable 
and  impossible  in  the  days  of  our  nineteenth  century. 

What  a  gulf  separates  this  from  the  actual  education  that 
we  see  and  admire !  No  academic  grove,  but  a  barrack 
with  regiments  drilled  like  Prussian  guards,  every  man  of  the 
whole  five  hundred  or  thousand  polishing  up  the  same  lines, 
translating  the  same  author,  filling  up  every  hour  of  the  day 
with  the  same  monotonous  task,  anxious  about  the  next  in- 
spection, and  eager  to  win  promotion  by  rigid  punctuality, 
and  mechanical  precision  in  drill.  And  the  master  and  phi- 
losopher himself  is  now  a  drill  sergeant,  bound  to  repeat  the 
regulation  lesson,  to  exact  minute  discipline  in  thoughts, 
himself  worn  into  a  machine  by  eternal  inspections,  exami- 
nations, and  formal  observance  of  regimental  orders.  He, 
poor  man,  neither  thinks  nor  observes ;  he  neither  judges  his 
pupils  in  his  mind,  nor  pretends  to  put  them  in  touch  with 
his  own.  He  analyses,  digests,  serves  out,  and  compels  the 
repetition  of  the  particular  book  or  scheme  of  inquiry  that 
for  the  moment  is  in  vogue  in  his  particular  academy.  It  is 
not  for  him  to  think :  he  has  to  repeat.  He  has  to  tell  his 
pupils  what  the  favourite  authority  in  history,  philosophy,  or 
science,  has  said  in  his  last  book,  and  to  see  which  of  his 
pupils  repeats  the  lesson  with  the  greatest  accuracy.  Tons 
of  written  answers  have  to  be  "marked  "  each  week  or  month ; 
and  the  teacher  is  concerned,  not  with  pupils,  but  with 
"papers."  As  if  the  repetition  of  what  some  learned  man 
has  written  were  knowledge,  or  as  if  the  being  drilled  into 
uniformity  by  a  dozen  regulation  tutors  were  the  same  thing  as 
being  inspired  by  the  free  suggestions  of  one  powerful  mind. 


THOUGHTS   ABOUT   EDUCATION  325 

No  one  denies  that  drill  is  good  in  its  place,  for  certain 
purposes ;  and  so  is  discipline,  punctuality,  and  rigid  order. 
It  all  has  fine  moral  uses  for  many  natures ;  it  can  turn  out 
troopers,  artillerymen,  and  able  seamen ;  and  a  dockyard, 
a  factory,  or  a  fire-brigade  would  be  failures  without  it. 
But  the  question  now  is,  if  it  can  equally  well  educate  minds, 
characters,  imaginations,  and  hearts;  whether  we  may  not, 
in  the  spiritual  and  intellectual  spheres,  overdo  the  discipline, 
the  uniformity,  and  the  formal  task.  The  question  is,  if 
young  natures  may  not  be  stunted  thereby,  and  growing  brains 
choked,  inflated,  or  sterilised.  Yet,  having  carried  out 
modern  education  to  the  highest  point  of  elaboration  and 
pressure  that  flesh  and  blood  can  sustain,  we  keep  on  calling 
for  a  still  more  intricate  set  of  regulations  and  for  more  pro- 
fessional experts  (as  the  jargon  has  it),  more  incorrigible 
"educationists." 

What  is  the  reason  for  all  this  ?  for  our  age  is  neither  per- 
verse nor  foolish,  and  reason  there  must  be  at  bottom.  The 
reason  for  our  practice  goes  very  deep  down,  and  takes  us 
into  the  spiritual  foundations  of  human  society.  But  then 
education  must  go  deep  down,  and  is  akin  to  the  innermost 
soul  of  social  phenomena.  The  reason  for  our  practice,  I 
hold  to  be,  that  education  must  normally  rest  on  moral  and 
religious  motives,  and  is  inextricably  bound  up  with  our  ideals 
of  duty  in  life,  and  our  sense  of  the  place  of  the  individual  in 
the  world  around  him.  We  all  admit  that  we  are  now  hope- 
lessly divided  and  in  doubt  about  moral  and  religious  ideals, 
about  the  motives  to  do  our  duty  and  our  conception  of  man's 
present  and  future,  in  our  reading  of  the  voice  of  Providence 
and  our  estimate  of  a  noble  life.  And,  being  so  hopelessly 
divided  into  a  thousand  schools  of  opinion,  we  are  resolved 
to  rest  education  on  purely  intellectual  bases,  to  surround  it 
with  material  and  pecuniary  motives,  to  limit  it  "to  what  will 


326  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

pay,"  and  to  what  we  can  bring  to  the  visible  test  of  "marks" 
by  the  first  two  rules  of  arithmetic. 

It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  New  World  may  be  spared  some 
of  the  evils  which  so  fatally  trammel  education  in  the  Old 
World.  Some  of  the  social  and  historic  sources  of  these 
evils  are  peculiar  to  Europe,  and  unknown  on  the  western 
side  of  the  Atlantic.  In  England,  at  least,  education  has 
to  be  organised  on  almost  rigid  social  strata;  lower-class, 
middle-class,  upper-class  schools  being  strictly  divided  ac- 
cording to  the  wealth  and  social  position  of  families.  No 
"gentleman"  ever  enters  an  "elementary"  school;  no  work- 
ing man  ever  enters  a  "public  school,"  as  by  an  ingenious 
euphemism  the  exclusive  seminaries  of  the  rich  are  still 
described.  And  if  a  middle-class,  or  "commercial"  school  be 
not  absolutely  closed  by  expense  or  convention  to  the  poor 
or  to  the  rich,  the  rare  and  casual  exceptions  are  not  enough 
to  break  the  rule  that  "intermediate  education"  means  the 
teaching  of  the  lower  middle-class  which  are  not  artisans 
and  are  not  called  "gentry."  I  am  not  prepared  to  say  how 
this  could  be  altered  at  once  in  such  a  country  as  England 
with  its  ancient  and  complex  social  conventions,  habits,  and 
hierarchy.  But  it  is  still  true  that  to  graduate  education, 
from  the  age  of  nine  to  that  of  twenty-one,  into  strict  ranks  of 
the  rich,  the  comfortable,  and  the  poor,  is  to  poison  education 
in  its  roots,  and  from  a  social  and  moral  point  of  view  to 
make  it  an  instrument  for  corrupting  the  mind.  It  was  not 
so  when  there  was  a  true  education,  in  the  ancient  world  or 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  And  the  bare  idea  of  dispensing  know- 
ledge by  castes  or  in  money  grades  would  have  scandalised 
Socrates,  Pythagoras,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  Epictetus  and 
Plutarch,  to  say  nothing  of  St.  Bernard,  Aquinas,  Dante, 
and  Petrarch. 

Having  got  all  wrong  by  this  fundamental  sin  of  appor- 


THOUGHTS    ABOUT    EDUCATION  T>21 

tioning  out  education  to  "gentlemen,"  to  tradesmen,  and  to 
artisans,  in  the  "public  school,"  the  commercial  "academy," 
and  the  board  school,  all  kinds  of  evils  have  been  generated 
and  increased.  Pride  of  caste  forces  those  who  aspire  to  the 
term  of  "gentlemen,"  the  governing  class,  which  monopolises 
commissions  in  army  and  navy,  the  superior  grades  of  the 
public  service,  the  Church  of  England,  and  the  learned  pro- 
fessions —  pride  of  caste  forces  them  to  cling  to  a  "classical" 
education  in  its  old  pedantic  form,  the  quoting  of  Latin 
without  false  quantities,  and  the  writing  of  doggerel  in  Greek 
or  Latin  verses.  I  remember  a  lad  at  a  public  school  who 
spent  a  weary  afternoon  over  one  Latin  hexameter.  This 
was  the  result,  — 

Cantabo  laudes  Martis,  VenerlsquS  lascivae. 

At  some  of  the  most  successful  schools  in  England,  boys 
spend  whole  terms  in  hammering  out  disgusting  nonsense 
like  this,  before  they  have  read  a  single  classical  author,  or 
can  construe  a  page  of  Ovid  and  Virgil.  A  few  of  the  boys 
are  clever  enough  to  catch  the  trick  of  longs  and  shorts,  just 
as  child  gymnasts  learn  to  balance  themselves  on  the  trapeze 
and  the  tight-rope ;  and  these  infant  phenomena  grow  up  to 
win  prizes,  scholarships,  and  honours,  and  turn  into  ignorant 
and  shallow  men.  So  far  from  this  mental  gymnastic  in 
parrot-like  imitation  of  the  classical  authors  conducing  to  a 
love  of  ancient  literature,  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  the  high- 
pressure  system  of  composition  pot-hunting  destroys  all  real 
interest  and  knowledge  of  the  great  works  of  antiquity. 
Many  a  brilliant  scholar  has  never  opened  Polybius  or 
Strabo,  Theophrastus  or  Plutarch,  and  the  day  after  his  last 
examination  he  is  anxious  to  be  rid  of  his  classics  along  with 
his  battered  cap  and  his  ragged  gown. 

I  have  so  often  already  tried  to  point  out  the  essential  vices 


328  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

of  the  examination  system,  that  I  will  not  return  to  it,  save  to 
say,  that,  the  more  I  see  of  it  the  more  do  I  feel  that  it  is  ruin- 
ing education  altogether.  Mechanical  examination  never 
can  test  any  knowledge  worth  having :  all  that  it  can  do  is  to 
debase  and  pervert  education.  |  The  pupil  has  before  him  an 
end,  which  is  not  knowledge  or  mental  culture  of  any  kind, 
but  success,  money,  applause,  and  superiority.  The  teacher 
has  before  him,  not  the  improvement  of  his  pupils'  minds, 
but  their  "fitness"  for  the  race;  and  those  who  set  the 
papers  (often  the  scurviest  professional  hacks)  practically 
order  the  teacher  what  he  has  to  teach.  There  are  no  doubt 
some  ideal  forms  of  examination  which  might  be  made  fair 
tests  of  knowledge ;  as  if  a  thoroughly  competent  teacher  were 
left  free  to  judge  not  more  than  a  dozen  or  a  score  of  students, 
and  had  a  week  or  two  and  a  free  head  to  go  about  it  in  his 
own  way.  But  this  we  know  is  impracticable.  There  is 
no  time ;  it  would  be  too  costly ;  and  we  will  not  trust  any 
one's  impartiality.  When  we  speak  of  academic  examina- 
tions, we  mean  five  hundred  students  writing  like  stenog- 
raphers for  four  or  five  days,  at  six  hours  per  diem;  the  papers 
being  "marked"  mechanically  under  severe  pressure  by 
three  or  four  overworked  experts  who  never  saw  the  pupils 
before,  and  are  forced  to  pass  or  pluck  them  as  a  barrack 
surgeon  does  recruits. 

The  source  of  this  shocking  parody  on  education  is  at 
bottom  a  moral  one.  Wanting  moral  and  religious  motives 
and  guidance  in  education,  we  fall  back  on  material  ones. 
We  supply  the  pupil  with  coarse  pecuniary  stimulants;  we 
will  not  trust  the  teacher  unless  we  can  calculate  his  results 
in  figures,  and  prove  his  competence  by  the  addition  of 
marks.  We  trust  neither  pupil  nor  teacher,  and  we  give 
both  low  aims  and  ideals,  and  not  high  ideals  and  aims.  J  And 
the  same  distrust  of  our  moral  control  over  education  tends, 


THOUGHTS   ABOUT   EDUCATION  329 

in  England  at  least,  to  foster  the  monstrous  exaggeration  of 
muscular  exercise,  which  is  now  become  a  serious  part  of  the 
educational  scheme  at  schools  and  colleges.  Boys  and  youths 
are  prone  enough  to  overrate  their  amusements  without  any 
stimulus,  and  need  no  teaching  to  put  their  studies  as  a  bad 
second  to  their  games.  And  now  the  modern  schoolmaster 
and  tutor  snatches  at  gymnastics  as  the  sheet-anchor  of 
morality.  He  enforces  games  to  the  grave  injury  of  boys' 
health,  preaches  from  his  pulpit  the  apotheosis  of  racing  and 
football,  in  the  feeble  hope  that  by  exhausting  the  body,  he 
will  make  discipline  easier,  and  check  moral  abuse. 

The  entire  "public  school,"  or  barrack  system,  the  college 
or  cenobite  system,  as  practised  in  England,  with  all  their 
unnatural  consequences  and  their  essentially  material  spirit, 
may  be,  as  things  are,  necessary  evils,  but  they  are  thoroughly 
abnormal  and  vicious  in  principle.  The  normal  and  noble 
education  can  only  be  given  in  families,  and  not  in  barracks 
or  convents.  The  moral,  religious,  and  social  stimulus  of 
education  ought  to  rise  mainly  there,  and  its  groundwork 
should  come  from  the  parents.  That  the  parents,  as  it  is, 
are  unfit,  unworthy,  unwilling  to  do  it,  absorbed  as  they  are 
in  the  struggle  for  existence  and  the  race  for  gain,  is  the  shame 
and  grief  of  our  materialist  habits,  for  it  does  not  release  the 
parents  from  their  duty.  They  can  only  hire  experts  to  do 
their  work,  and  test  the  experts'  skill  by  the  number  of  prizes 
that  their  pupils  can  bag,  and  the  thousands  of  marks  with 
which  they  can  be  credited. 

It  is  too  true  now  that  few  families  can  really  give  a  high 
education,  and  few  young  persons  can  educate  themselves  even 
with  assistance  and  opportunity.  But  there  is  no  other  way. 
The  groundwork  of  education  must  be  laid  at  home,  and  the 
essentials  of  education  must  come  from  the  learner  himself. 
The  guidance,  the  inspiration,  the  higher  organisation,  of 


330  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

education  belong  no  doubt  to  superior  and  special  teachers. 
But  only  the  rare  superior  spirit  is  worth  much.  The  rank 
and  file  of  hack  teachers  do  more  harm  than  good,  except,  it 
may  be,  in  the  mechanical  rudiments  of  learning,  which  are 
hardly  needed  after  the  age  of  fifteen.  From  about  that 
time  of  life  it  is  guidance  and  inspiration  that  is  needed,  not 
hammering,  cramming,  and  punishing.  As  years  increase, 
what  is  wanted  in  education  is  far  more  freedom,  individual- 
ity, diversity  of  bent,  more  leisure  than  we  see  now  in  the 
programme  of  any  "educationist,"  nay,  I  will  not  hesitate 
to  say  it,  more  indulgence  of  any  high  taste,  mere  day-dream- 
ing, if  you  will,  in  a  word,  more  rest  and  peace.  Education 
may  help  a  man  to  form  his  mind  :  it  cannot  make  it  for  him, 
though  it  may  twist  it  or  crush  it.  And  that  education  will 
be  best  which  honestly  acknowledges  how  little  it  can  do 
outside  the  home,  how  small  is  its  power  for  good  compared 
with  the  natural  and  acquired  forces  of  each  man's  brain  and 
soul. 


VI 

EDUCATION   VERSUS   EXAMINATION 

(From  "The  Nineteenth  Century,"   i< 


My  point  in  this  discussion  is:  —  that,  having  been  called  in 
to  aid  Education,  Examination  has  grown  and  hardened 
into  the  master  of  Education.  Education  is  becoming  the 
slave  of  its  own  creature  and  servant.  I  do  not  deny  that 
examination  has  its  uses :  I  do  not  say  that  we  can  do  with- 
out it.  I  say,  that  it  is  a  good  servant,  but  a  bad  master; 
and,  like  good  servants  turned  bad  masters,  it  is  now  bully- 
ing, spoiling,  and  humiliating  education. 

Those  who  teach  are  the  proper  judges  of  what  should 
be  taught,  how  it  should  be  taught,  and  what  are  the  results 
of  teaching.  One  of  the  methods  by  which  they  have 
sought  to  test  the  results  of  their  own  teaching  was  by  examina- 
tion —  one  of  the  methods,  an  instrument  to  be  used  with  dis- 
cretion, moderation,  and  freedom.  This  expedient  (a  mere 
subordinate  expedient)  has  silently  grown  into  a  system;  it 
has  perpetually  enlarged  its  own  jurisdiction;  it  has  stiffened 
into  a  special  profession ;  it  has  created  a  body  of  specialists 
called  Examiners.  As  a  body,  the  class  of  special  examiners 
are  younger  men,  of  less  experience,  and,  except  in  ele- 
mentary schools,  of  inferior  learning,  as  compared  with 
teachers  as  a  class.  They  very  soon  evolve  an  artificial  and 
professional  skill,  and  set  up  hard,  narrow,  technical  tests. 
Their  business  is  not  to  teach;  but  to  test  whether  the 
teachers  are  teaching  and  what  the  learners  are  learning. 

331 


33 2  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

This  forces  the  learners  not  to  attend  to  their  own  teachers, 
but  to  find  some  way  of  satisfying  the  examiners.  Examina- 
tion papers,  not  text-books,  come  to  be  the  real  subjects  of 
study;  the  aim  of  the  student  is  to  get  an  insight  into  the 
mind  of  his  examiner,  not  that  of  his  teacher;  and  to  master, 
not  the  subject  of  his  study,  but  that  artificial  skill  of  pass- 
ing examinations.  Thereupon  grew  up  another  class  of 
specialists  —  the  Crammers.  Their  business  is,  not  to 
teach,  nor  to  test  teaching;  but  to  enable  students  to  pass 
the  tests.  This  soon  became  an  art  of  its  own,  as  artificial 
as  playing  whist,  or  the  violin.  So,  in  the  cricket  field, 
having  called  in  professional  bowlers  to  practise,  it  became 
necessary  to  call  in  professional  "coaches"  to  teach  the  de- 
fence of  the  wicket.  And  in  the  result,  Education  is  tending 
to  become  a  highly  exciting  match,  not  so  much  between 
the  players  as  between  the  "bowlers"  and  the  "coaches." 
The  Teachers  are  slowly  thrust  out  and  controlled  by  the 
Examiners;  they  in  turn  are  checked  and  dodged  at  every 
turn  by  the  Crammers;  so  that  learning  is  fast  passing  into 
the  grasp  of  two  classes  of  specialists,  neither  of  whom  are 
teachers,  nor  pretend  to  teach. 

I  have  myself  had  experience  both  of  teaching  and  of 
examining  for  more  than  thirty  years,  in  more  than  one 
University,  and  in  several  places  of  learning.  Though  not 
belonging  to  the  special  class  of  examiners,  I  have  constantly 
been  occupied  with  examining,  have  worked  much  with 
examiners,  and  have  had  no  small  experience  of  the  practical 
working  of  the  system.  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  regard  the 
special  examiners  as  a  most  acute,  energetic,  and  conscien- 
tious body  of  men :  and  I  say  the  same  of  the  crammers  as 
a  class.  Both  do  their  work  with  great  ability  and  conspicu- 
ous honesty.  It  is  not  the  men;  it  is  the  vicious  system 
which  is  in  fault.     Every  teacher  knows  by  experience  that 


EDUCATION    VerSUS    EXAMINATION  333 

when  he  has  to  take  his  place  in  the  examination  curriculum, 
he  has  to  submit  to  the  system,  and  he  does  his  best  to  prac- 
tise the  examining  "art."  And  when,  as  every  teacher  nowa- 
days must,  he  has  to  turn  crammer,  he  tries  to  acquire  the 
crammer's  art?  —  omnes  eodem  cogimur.  Teachers,  ex- 
aminers, crammers,  and  students,  all  have  to  take  their 
place  in  the  vast  examining  machine,  which,  like  the  Prussian 
military  system,  grinds  out  a  uniform  pattern.  The  huge 
examining  mill  grinds  continually,  and  grinds  very  fast,  un- 
like the  mills  of  the  Gods  —  but  the  grain  it  casts,  aside: 
it  is  designed  to  grind  out  the  husk. 

I  do  not  say  that  we  can  do  without  examinations;  nor 
do  I  object  to  all  examinations,  under  any  condition.  My 
complaint  is  confined  to  the  incessant  frequency  of  examina- 
tions, the  growth  of  the  practice  into  a  highly  artificial 
system,  the  creation  of  a  profession  of  examining,  and  its 
correlative  the  profession  of  cramming,  the  wholesale,  me- 
chanical, and  hurried  way  in  which  the  examinations  are 
held,  and  the  subjection  of  teaching  to  examining.  In  sum, 
I  complain  that  the  trick,  the  easily  acquired  and  cheaply 
purchasable  trick  of  answering  printed  questions,  should 
now  so  largely  take  the  place  of  solid  knowledge  and  be 
officially  held  out  as  the  end  of  study. 

I  shall  say  nothing  about  elementary  schools.  As  these 
are  compulsory  by  law,  supported  by  rates  and  taxes,  and 
administered  by  the  State  and  public  bodies,  and  above  all 
teach  mainly  the  mere  rudiments,  there  may  be  reasons  for 
an  organised  system  of  examination  which  do  not  apply  to 
the  higher  education.  Here  the  examiners  are  clearly  su- 
perior in  learning  to  the  teachers;  the  curriculum  itself  is 
more  or  less  mechanical  and  capable  of  mechanical  tests; 
and  a  certain  uniformity  may  be  inevitable,  and  a  certain 
standard  of  efficiency  must  be  tested.      I  do  not  approve 


334  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

'  our  present  system  of  examining  in  elementary  schools, 
but  t  I  desire  to  say  nothing  about  it. 
t1  Nor  shall  I  say  anything  about  the  physical  effects  of 
over-pressure  by  examination.  It  is  not  my  subject  and  I 
leave  it  to  others,  merely  adding,  as  is  plain,  that  at  least 
nine-tenths  of  any  over-pressure  on  students  arises  from 
examinations  and  not  from  simple  study.  Nor  shall  I  say 
anything  about  official  appointments.  I  have  no  special 
theory  or  plan  to  support.  As  a  rule,  I  think  people  whom 
we  trust  to  govern  must  be  trusted  to  select  capable  agents. 
If  we  cannot  trust  them  to  do  this,  let  us  not  trust  them 
to   govern   us.     If   examinations   are   required    to    restrain 

^>v  r,  I  prefer  to  deal  with  the  jobbery  face  to  face  and 
by  direct  means,  and  not  to  pervert  all  public  and  private 
education,  in  order  to  checkmate  the  wicked  jobbers,  and 
reward  the  best  crammed  ones. 

Nor  am  I  called  upon  here  to  devise  a  counter  project 
and  to  suggest  other  tests  than  examination  for  distinctions 
and  prizes.  The  distinction  and  prize  system  is  already 
absurdly  overdone;  and  nineteen-twentieths  of  the  tests  are 
wholly  needless,  or  rather  actively  mischievous.  We  want 
neither  distinctions,  prizes,  nor  tests  in  anything  like  the 
profusion  in  which  they  are  now  poured  out.  Art,  learning, 
politics,  and  amusement  are  deluged  with  shows,  races, 
competitions,  and  prizes.  Life  is  becoming  one  long  scramble 
of  prize- winning  and  pot -hunting.  And  Examination,  stereo- 
typed into  a  trade,  is  having  the  same  effect  on  Education 
that  the  betting  system  has  on  every  healthy  sport.  I  do 
not  deny  that  teachers  may  usefully  examine  their  own 
students  as  a  help  to  their  own  teaching.  I  do  not  say  there 
may  not  be  one  public  and  formal  examination  in  any  pro- 
longed educational  curriculum.  My  plea  is  against  that 
organised,  mechanical,  incessant,  professional  examination, 


EDUCATION   Versus   EXAMINATION  335 

by  which  education  is  being  distorted  and  the  spirit  of  health 
learning  is  being  poisoned.  c. 

Examination,  like  so  many  other  things,  is  useful  as  loi.,_ 
as  it  is  spontaneous,  occasional,  and  simple.  Its  mischief 
begins  when  it  grows  to  be  organised  into  a  trade,  and  the 
be-all  and  end-all  of  its  own  sphere.  The  less  the  student 
be  "prepared,"  in  the  technical  sense,  the  better.  The  more 
free  the  examiner  be  to  use  his  own  discretion  with  each 
examinee,  the  more  likely  he  is  to  judge  him  fairly.  It  was 
so  once.  All  this  is  now  changed  in  the  thirty  or  forty  years 
since  the  examining  mania  set  in.  The  myriad  examina- 
tions which  now  encompass  human  life  have  called  out  a 
army  of  trained  examiners  who  have  reduced  the  busin 
to  a  complicated  art  as  difficult  and  special  as  chess,  l.±±.  . 
chess-playing,  the  art  of  examiner  and  examinee  has  been 
wondrously  developed  by  practice.  The  trained  examinee 
has  now  learned  to  play  ten  examination  games  blindfold. 
He  can  do  with  ease  what  the  most  learned  man  of  the  old 
school  could  not  do.  Gibbon  would  be  plucked  in  the 
Modern  History  school.  Arthur  Wellesley  would  never  get 
into  the  army.  And  Burke  would  have  got  low  marks, 
through  not  apportioning  his  time  to  the  various  questions 
in  the  paper. 

I  seriously  doubt  if  many  of  our  great  scholars,  our  famous 
law  vers,  historians,  and  men  of  science  could  "floor"  off- 
hand a  high-class  examination  paper.  They  would  not  put 
their  knowledge  in  the  sharp,  smart,  orderly,  cocksure  style 
which  so  much  delights  the  examiner.  They  would  muddle 
the  relation  of  shire-moot  to  the  hundred-moot,  or  they  would 
forget  the  point  in  Smith  v.  Jones,  or  they  might  differ  from 
the  examining  board  as  to  the  exact  number  of  the  Isomeric 
Amyl  Alcohols  now  known.  All  this  your  trained  examinee, 
well  nursed  bv  thorough  crammers,  has  at  the  tips  of  his 


336  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

fingers.  He  "floors"  his  paper  with  instinctive  knack — ■ 
seeing  at  a  glance  how  many  minutes  he  can  give  to  this  or 
that  question,  which  question  will  "pay"  best  —  and  trots 
out  his  surface  information  and  his  ten-day  memory  in  neat 
little  pellets  beautifully  docketed  off  with  1,  2,  3,  (a)  (/3),  (7), 
the  "five  elements"  of  this,  the  "seven  periods"  of  this 
movement,  and  the  wonderful  discovery  (last  month)  of  a 
new  reading  by  Professor  Wunderbar. 

Of  course  all  this  does  not  take  in  the  examiner.  He 
knows  that  the  student  does  not  know  all  this,  that  this  is 
not  the  wealth  of  the  student's  reading,  or  the  product  of 
the  student's  native  genius.  But  what  can  he  do?  His 
task  is  to  set  questions,  and  the  student's  task  is  to  answer 
them.  If  the  questions  on  paper  are  answered  right,  cadit 
qucEstio.  The  examiner's  business  is  not  with  what  the  stu- 
dent knows,  but  with  how  many  questions  he  can  answer, 
and  how  many  marks  he  can  score.  The  examiner  may 
see  that  he  is  not  examining  the  students  so  much  as  the 
teachers,  or  perhaps  the  crammers.  All  that  he  can  posi- 
tively say  is,  that  the  candidate  has  been  brought  to  the 
post  perfectly  "fit."  The  student  may  be  writing  down 
mere  "tips"  from  memory;  but  if  he  makes  no  slip,  and  he 
has  been  carefully  crammed,  the  examiner  has  to  admit  that 
he  has  got  his  marks.  The  examiner  may  doubt  if  the 
knowledge  is  real,  or  is  worth  anything.  He  cannot  state 
that  the  man  has  failed.  If  he  had  time  and  opportunity 
he  could  easily  ascertain  that  point. 

But  in  many  examinations  there  is  no  viva  voce  allowed; 
in  most  examinations  the  public  viva  voce  is  not  thought 
decisive,  owing  to  nervousness,  temper,  accident,  and  vari- 
ous points  of  temperament  and  manner.  Few  examiners 
now  care  to  decide  by  viva  voce;  which  in  any  case  is  done 
in  a  hurry  and  under  disturbing  conditions  that  destroy  its 


EDUCATION   VerSllS   EXAMINATION  337 

value  as  a  real  test.  An  examiner  has  rarely  the  chance  of 
trying  a  candidate  with  a  fresh  paper,  or  of  giving  him  as 
many  quiet  verbal  questions  from  time  to  time  as  he  might 
like.  There  is  no  time,  there  is  no  opportunity.  There  are 
the  rigid  rules;  the  candidate  is  not  accessible  at  the  time 
wanted ;  he  cannot  be  got  into  a  state  perfectly  composed, 
easy,  and  master  of  himself.  A  quiet  afternoon  or  a  morn- 
ing's walk  would  settle  it  all.  But  the  clock  goes  round; 
the  Machine  grinds  on ;  the  list  must  be  out  in  a  few  hours ; 
the  examiners  cannot  sit  disputing  for  ever ;  an  average  must 
be  struck,  time  is  called,  and  down  goes  the  candidate's  name 
—  usually,  be  it  said,  "with  the  benefit  of  the  doubt." 

This  is  no  fault  of  the  examiner.  His  task  is  very  diffi- 
cult, trying,  and  irksome.  None  but  trained  men  can  per- 
form it ;  and  it  is  wonderful  how  much  trained  men  can  do, 
and  with  what  patience  and  conscience  they  make  up  their 
lists.  But  the  higher  examiner  now  has  to  mark  on  an  aver- 
age, in  a  week,  from  2000  to  3000  questions,  perhaps  from 
4000  to  5000  pages  of  manuscript.  In  this  mass  he  has  to 
weigh  and  assess  each  answer,  and  to  keep  each  candidate 
clear  in  his  mind,  throughout  eight  or  ten  sets  of  papers.  He 
is  lucky  if  he  can  do  this  with  less  than  ten  hours  per  day  of 
work  at  high  pressure  —  reading  in  each  hour,  say  from  fifty 
to  a  hundred  pages  of  manuscript.  He  can  no  more  waste  an 
hour,  or  follow  up  a  thought,  than  the  captain  of  an  Atlantic 
liner  can  linger  in  his  ocean  race.  The  huge  engine  revolves 
incessantly;  the  examiner's  mark-sheet  slowly  fills  up  hour 
by  hour  till  it  looks  like  a  banker's  ledger ;  some  fifty  or  a 
hundred  candidates  get  into  groups,  of  Jones,  Smith,  Brown, 
etc.,  or  else  Nos.  7695,  7696,  7697,  etc.,  and  soon  Jones, 
Smith,  Brown,  are  labelled  for  life. 

What  a  farce  to  call  this  Examination  !  Any  sensible 
man  who  wanted  to  engage  a  confidential  secretary,  or  a 


338  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

literary  assistant,  or  a  man  to  send  on  some  responsible 
mission,  would  not  trust  to  a  mark-sheet,  so  mechanical,  so 
hurried.  He  would  see  each  candidate  once  or  twice  alone 
for  an  hour  or  two,  talk  quietly  to  him,  get  him  to  talk  quietly, 
leave  him  to  write  a  short  piece,  set  him  to  do  a  piece  of 
actual  work,  try  him  backwards  and  forwards  in  spontaneous, 
unexpected  ways,  as  the  quality  of  each  candidate  seemed 
to  suggest.  He  would  not  burden  himself  with  more  than 
four  or  five  candidates  at  a  time.  At  the  end  of  a  week,  a 
sensible  man  could  perfectly  make  up  his  mind  which  of  the 
four  or  five  was  the  best  fitted  for  the  particular  work  required, 
and  he  would  almost  certainly  be  right. 

Nothing  of  this  is  possible  in  the  official  Examination. 
The  "rules"  are  stricter  than  those  of  a  prison.  There  is 
absolutely  no  "discretion."  Discretion  might  let  in  the  de- 
mon of  Favouritism.  The  candidates  are  often  numbered 
and  ticketed  like  prisoners,  to  avoid  the  disclosure  even  of 
names.  The  precise  number  of  papers  is  prescribed,  and 
their  preposterous  multiplication  leaves  the  examiner  about 
one  minute  for  each  page  of  manuscript.  With  one  or  two 
hundred  candidates  to  get  through  in  a  week  or  ten  days, 
the  examination  is  really  like  the  inspection  of  a  regiment. 
The  uniform  and  accoutrements  must  conform  to  the  regu- 
lation standard. 

It  is  supposed  that  examiners  are  masters  of  the  situation 
and  have  a  large  range  for  a  free  hand.  It  is  not  so.  The 
examiner's  mind  runs  into  grooves,  and  a  highly  skilled  class 
have  sorted  and  surveyed  the  possible  field.  In  each  sub- 
ject or  book  there  are  only  available,,  in  practice,  some  few 
hundreds  of  possible  "questions."  The  system  of  publishing 
examination  papers,  and  close  study  of  the  questions  over 
many  years,  have  taught  a  body  of  experts  to  reduce,  classify, 
and  tabulate  these.     So  many  become  stock  questions,  so 


EDUCATION   VerSUS   EXAMINATION  339 

many  others  are  excluded  as  having  been  set  last  year,  etc. ; 
and  in  the  result  a  skilled  examinee,  and  still  more  a  skilled 
crammer,  can  pick  out  topics  enough  to  make  certain  of 
passing  with  credit.  Knowledge  as  such,  and  knowledge 
to  answer  papers,  are  quite  different  things.  Student  and 
examiner  read  books  on  quite  different  plans,  if  they  wish  to 
gain  knowledge,  or  if  they  are  thinking  of  the  examination. 

The  memory  is  entirely  different.  The  examinee's  mem- 
ory is  a  ten-day  memory,  very  sharp,  clear,  methodical  for 
the  moment,  like  the  memory  cultivated  by  a  busy  law- 
yer, full  of  dates,  of  three  different  courses,  of  four  distinct 
causes,  of  five  divisions  of  that,  and  six  phases  of  the  other. 
It  is  a  memory  deliberately  trained  to  carry  a  quantity  of 
things  with  sharp  edges,  in  convenient  order,  for  a  very 
short  period  of  time.  The  feats  which  the  examinee  can 
perform  are  like  the  feats  of  a  conjurer  with  bottles  and 
knives.  The  examinee  himself  cannot  tell  how  he  does  it. 
He  acquires  a  diabolical  knack  of  spotting  "questions"  in 
the  books  he  reads.  He  gains  a  marvellous  flair  for  what 
will  catch  the  examiner's  attention.  As  he  studies  subject 
after  subject  his  eye  glances  like  a  vulture  on  the  "points." 
Examination  is  a  system  of  "  points."  What  has  no  "  points  " 
cannot  be  examined.  Many  able  and  industrious  students 
do  take  the  trouble  to  acquire  this  flair;  some  will  not,  or 
cannot,  acquire  it.  But  certainly  a  good  many  acquire  it, 
by  an  outlay  of  labour  or  money,  who  are  neither  able  nor 
industrious  at  all. 

A  man  going  through  the  full  school,  college,  and  pro- 
fessional career  now  passes  from  ten  to  twenty  of  these  ex- 
aminations, at  intervals  perhaps  of  six  months  or  a  year. 
From  the  age  of  ten  till  twenty-five  he  is  for  ever  in  presence 
of  the  mighty  Mill.  The  Mill  is  to  him  money,  success, 
honour,   and  bread  and  butter  for  life.     Distinctions  and 


34Q 


REALITIES    AND   IDEALS 


prizes  mean  money  and  honour.  Success  in  examinations 
mean  distinctions  and  prizes.  And  whatever  does  not 
mean  success  in  examinations  is  not  education.  Parents, 
governments,  schools,  colleges,  universities,  and  departments 
combine  to  stimulate  the  competitive  examination  and  the 
mark-system.  None  quite  like  it;  but  all  keep  up  the 
tarantula  dance  — "needs  must  when  the  devil  drives." 
The  result  is  that  the  Frankenstein  monster  of  Examination 
is  becoming  the  master  of  education.  Students  and  parents 
dare  not  waste  time  in  study  which  does  not  directly  help 
towards  success  in  the  test. 

One  hears  of  the  ordinary  lad  at  school  or  college,  either 
as  amusing  himself  because  "he  is  not  going  in  this  year," 
or  else  as  "working  up  very  hard  for  his  examination."  He 
is  never  simply  studying,  never  acquiring  knowledge.  He  is 
losing  all  idea  of  study,  except  as  " preparation"  for  examina- 
tion. He  cannot  burden  his  memory  with  what  will  not 
"pay."  And  a  subject  which  carries  no  "marks,"  or  very 
few  "marks,"  is  almost  tabooed.  Books  are  going  out  of 
fashion;  it  is  only  analyses,  summaries,  and  tables  which 
are  studied.  But  published  examination  papers  are  the  real 
Bible  of  the  student  of  to-day  —  nodurna  versanda  manu, 
versanda  diurna. 

Next  to  old  examination  papers,  the  manuscript  "tips" 
of  some  famous  coach  form  the  grand  text-books.  One  of 
the  ablest  men  I  ever  examined,  who  bitterly  complained 
that  he  had  failed  in  a  coveted  distinction,  was  told  that  he 
had  not  read  his  books  on  a  given  subject.  "Why!"  he 
said  indignantly,  "he  had  not  read  the  text-books;  but  he 
had  mastered  a  valuable  volume  of  'tips'  in  manuscript, 
which  was  said  to  contain  every  question  which  could  be  set 
in  a  paper."  He  failed  through  pushing  the  system  too  far; 
and  a  tragedy  was  the  end. 


EDUCATION   verSUS   EXAMINATION  341 

The  Examination,  thus  made  the  "fountain  of  honour," 
governs  the  whole  course  of  study.  If  the  teacher  takes  up 
a  subject,  not  obviously  grist  for  the  great  Mill,  the  students 
cease  to  listen,  and  leave  his  classes.  The  instant  he  says 
something  which  sounds  like  an  examination  "tip,"  every 
ear  is  erect,  every  pen  takes  down  his  words.  The  keen 
student  of  to-day  is  getting  like  the  reporter  of  an  evening 
journal:  eager  after  matter  that  will  tell,  will  make  a  good 
"answer,"  capital  examination  "copy."  The  Mill  governs 
the  whole  period  of  education,  from  hie,  hcec,  hoc,  to  the 
final  launch  in  a  profession.  I  know  little  boys  of  ten,  in 
the  ego  et  Balbus  stage,  who  are  being  ground  in  printed 
examination  papers,  which  I  could  not  answer  myself.  And 
big  men,  older  than  Pitt  when  he  governed  England,  or 
Hannibal  when  he  commanded  armies,  are  still  ruining  their 
constitutions  by  cramming  up  "analyses,"  and  manuscript 
"tips"  of  great  "coaches." 

The  result  is  that  poor  little  urchins  in  frocks  are  in  train- 
ing for  some  "Nursery  stakes,"  as  an  old  friend  of  mine 
used  to  call  the  trials  of  preparatory  schools.  The  prize 
schoolboy  who  sweeps  the  board  on  Speech-day  often  gets  a 
perfect  loathing  for  books,  and  indeed  for  any  study  that  is 
not  "cramming";  and  the  youth  who  leaves  his  University, 
loaded  with  "Honours,"  may  prove  to  be  quite  a  portent  of 
ignorance  and  mental  babyishness.  He  has  learned  the  trick 
of  playing  with  a  straight  bat  the  Examiner's  most  artful 
twisters.  But  he  cannot  bear  the  sight  of  a  book ;  and,  like 
any  successful  speculator,  he  has  a  hearty  contempt  for  mere 
knowledge. 

Examiners  are  very  clever  men;  but  they  ought  not  to 
form  a  sort  of  "Ministry  of  Education,"  controlling  on  one 
uniform  and  mechanical  scheme  the  entire  field  of  educa- 
tion.    Examining   is    more   irksome,    less    continuous,    and 


342  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

worse  paid  than  teaching.  Hence,  as  a  rule,  the  professional 
examiners  are  hardly  men  of  the  same  experience,  learning, 
and  culture  as  the  professional  teachers  in  the  highest  grades. 
They  have  not  devoted  themselves  to  special  subjects  of 
study;  they  do  not  know  the  peculiar  difficulties  and  wants 
of  the  student ;  they  are  not  responsible  for  the  interests  of 
a  given  branch  of  learning.  A  body  of  professional  exam- 
iners, moving  about  from  great  educational  centres,  tend 
to  give  a  uniform  and  regulation  character  of  all  learning. 
Our  educational  centres  are  yet  in  far  too  chaotic  and  fluid 
a  stage  themselves  to  justify  them  in  stereotyping  any  system. 

Knots  of  clever,  eager  trained  "experts"  in  the  examining 
art  are  being  sent  about  the  country  from  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge, marking,  questioning,  classing,  and  certifying  right 
and  left,  on  a  technical,  narrow,  mechanical  method.  They 
would  be  far  better  employed  in  learning  something  useful 
themselves.  As  it  is,  they  dominate  education,  high  and 
low.  They  are  like  the  missi  dominici  of  a  mediaeval  king, 
or  the  legates  a  latere  of  a  mediaeval  pope.  They  pitch  the 
standard  and  give  the  word.  Public  schools  revise  their 
curriculum,  set  aside  their  own  teachers,  and  allow  the 
academic  visitor  to  reverse  the  order  of  their  own  classes. 
The  Mill  sets  a  uniform  type  for  the  University.  Colleges 
give  way  and  enter  for  the  race.  One  by  one  the  public 
schools  have  to  submit,  for  prizes  are  the  test;  and  success 
means  prizes.  Next  the  minor  schools  and  private  schools 
have  to  follow  suit.  And  at  last  the  smallest  preparatory 
school,  where  children  in  nursery  frocks  are  crying  over  qui, 
qua,  quod,  has  to  dance  the  same  tarantula. 

For  this  state  of  things  the  remedies  seem  to  be  these. 
Let  examinations  be  much  fewer  —  they  are  ten  times  too 
numerous.  Let  them  be  much  more  free  —  they  are  over- 
organised,  over-regulated.     Give  examiners  more  time,  more 


EDUCATION   VerSUS   EXAMINATION  343 

discretion,  more  room.  The  more  the  teachers  are  them- 
selves the  examiners  the  better;  the  less  examining  becomes 
a  profession  and  a  special  staff,  the  better.  Do  not  set 
examiners  to  test  teachers,  as  well  as  students;  do  not  set 
up  mechanical  rules  whereby  to  test  the  examiner.  Believe 
that  it  is  possible  to  learn  without  any  prize,  money,  or  re- 
ward in  view.  Trust  the  teacher;  trust  him  to  teach,  trust 
him  to  examine.  Trust  the  examiner,  and  do  not  set  up  a 
Mill.  Above  all,  trust  the  student.  Encourage  him  to  study 
for  the  sake  of  knowledge,  for  his  own  sake,  and  the  public 
good.  Cease  to  present  learning  to  him  as  a  succession  of 
races,  where  the  knowing  ones  may  land  both  fame  and 
profit. 


VII 

LITERATURE  TO-DAY 

When  I  am  asked  (as  happens  to-day)  to  respond  to  "the 
toast  of  Literature,"  —  optimist,  or,  rather,  meliorist,  as  I 
am,  I  fall  into  a  quite  pessimist  vein,  and  sing  in  a  very 
minor  key.  As  I  look  back  over  the  sixty  years  since  I 
first  began  to  read  freely  for  myself,  English  Literature  has 
never  been  so  flat  as  it  is  now.  There  never  was  so  copious 
a  torrent  of  sound  English,  sterling  sense,  industrious  learn- 
ing as  there  is  to-day ;  but  as  to  the  witchery  of  form,  native 
humour,  mother-wit,  creative  genius  —  ah !  how  poor  is  the 
sum ! 

In  my  student  days  —  say  the  mid-'forties  and  mid- 
'fifties  —  our  poets  were  Tennyson,  the  two  Brownings, 
FitzGerald,  Rossetti  —  all  at  their  zenith.  So  were  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  Bulwer-Lytton,  Kingsley,  Disraeli.  The  Brontes, 
Trollope,  George  Eliot,  Swinburne,  Morris,  were  just  coming 
into  line.  Year  after  year  Ruskin  poured  out  resounding 
fugues  in  every  form  of  melodious  art.  Our  historians  were 
Carlyle,  Grote,  Milman,  Macaulay,  Kinglake  —  then  Froude 
and  Freeman.  Our  philosophers  were  Mill,  Spencer,  Buckle, 
Newman,  Hamilton,  Mansel.  As  I  look  back  over  these 
sixty  years  it  seems  to  me  as  if  English  Literature  had  been 
slowly  sinking,  as  they  say  our  eastern  counties  are  sinking 
below  the  level  of  the  sea.  Where  shall  we  find  an  Arnold, 
a  Pater,  a  Symonds,  a  Stevenson,  such  a  fascinating  his- 
torian as  J.  R.  Green  —  such  "a  first-class  fighting  man" 
as  Thomas  Huxley? 

Compare  an  early  number  of  any  one  of  the  Reviews 

344 


LITERATURE   TO-DAY  345 

with  any  number  of  to-day.  We  shall  find  some  seven  to 
ten  papers  in  any  old  number,  each  written  in  literary  form ; 
measured,  thoughtful,  filling  a  sheet,  it  may  be  two  sheets, 
of  print.  To-day  there  will  be  seventeen  or  twenty-seven 
scrappy  bits,  tumbled  out  of  the  writer's  note-book,  and 
half  of  them  signed  by  leaders  of  fashion  or  society  "lions." 
Style,  literary  shape,  and  any  more  than  fugitive  purpose 
are  flung  aside.  A  name  which  the  public  can  recognise,  a 
"breezy"  bit  of  gossip,  is  what  the  reader  wants  —  is  all  that 
he  has  time  to  notice.  Railroads,  telegrams,  telephones,  mo- 
tors, games,  "week-ends,"  have  made  life  one  long  scramble, 
which  wealth,  luxury,  and  the  "smart  world"  have  de- 
bauched. The  result  is  sixpenny  magazines,  four-and-six- 
penny  novels,  "short  stories"  in  every  half-penny  rag  — 
print,  print  —  print  —  everywhere,  and  "not  a  drop  to 
drink" — sheets  of  picture  advertisements — but  of  litera- 
ture, not  an  ounce.  • 

I  am  free  to  say  this,  because  I  am  myself  just  as  bad  as 
any  one,  being  quite  indifferent  to  literary  form.  I  do  not 
pretend  to  be  "a  man  of  letters,"  and  I  felt  the  truth  of  a 
critic  in  the  provincial  Press  the  other  day  when  he  said  of 
me,  "the  absence  of  literary  style  from  his  writings  had 
conveyed  a  wrong  impression  of  him  to  most  of  us";  and 
he  kindly  said  that,  in  spite  of  having  no  style,  I  was  a  rather 
nice  gentleman.  Yes !  as  I  said  in  my  little  Memoir,  my 
business  is  to  teach,  to  moralise,  and  reform,  or  to  try  to  do 
so ;  and  I  am  so  intent  on  the  matter  in  hand  that  I  just 
blurt  it  straight  out,  and  do  not  pretend  to  be  what  in  the 
provinces  they  call  a  "stylist."  But  I  think  there  ought 
to  be  stylists,  and  that  a  fine  literary  style  is  a  thing  to  be 
desired ;  a  form  which  enables  true  thoughts  to  be  remem- 
bered, to  live,  and  to  work,  without  which  even  sound  ideas 
fail  to  become  lasting. 


346  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

Now,  why  is  good  literature  disappearing?  The  causes 
are  complex,  subtle,  deep,  and  wide.  They  are  —  the  in- 
crease of  material  appliances  vulgarising  life,  and  making 
it  a  scramble  for  good  things.  Next  comes  the  vast  multi- 
plicity of  numbers  tending  to  uniformity,  crushing  indi- 
viduality, flattening  us  out  into  a  crowd  of  equal  units. 
Lastly,  comes  the  sudden  spread  of  a  low  and  mechanical 
instruction.  Life  has  become  infinitely  faster,  easier,  ma- 
chine-run; less  spontaneous,  less  jovial,  far  uglier.  The 
huge  agglomeration  of  similar  beings  in  our  abnormal  cities 
weighs  upon  the  sense  of  personal  independence.  The  mass 
of  fellow-citizens,  at  once  our  equals,  and  our  rivals,  is  too 
overwhelming  to  struggle  against.  We  all  have  to  conform 
to  the  fashion  of  the  day.  We  dare  not  cut  our  coats  or  our 
collars  to  please  ourselves:  we  are  swept  away  by  the  irre- 
sistible torrent  of  "what  everybody  does  now."  The  won- 
derful spread  of  what  is  absurdly  called  Education,  but 
which  is  really  nothing  but  the  mechanical  instrument  of 
real  culture,  instruction  in  the  "Three  R's,"  has  evoked  an 
endless  supply  of  vapid,  dull  stuff.  Fifty  times  the  print 
is  poured  out  now  than  was  done  two  or  three  generations 
ago.  The  bulk  of  it  is  of  the  same  washy  type.  That 
type,  by  its  mere  volume,  sets  the  "fashion."  To  ignore 
the  type  is  to  be  "old-fashioned":  to  defy  it  is  to  be  "a 
crank."     And  so  the  literary  currency  is  debased. 

Take  the  machine-made  life  we  lead  now.  Steam,  elec- 
tricity in  a  thousand  forms,  telephones,  motors,  typewriting, 
photographs  at  every  turn ;  nobody  writes  a  legible  hand ; 
we  dictate  twenty  scrawls  a  day,  where  our  ancestors  would 
write  one  charming  letter.  We  do  not  saunter  about  a 
lovely  countryside,  lingering  over  every  new  landscape, 
listening  to  every  bird  and  watching  every  living  thing ;  we 
rattle  over  it  at  twenty-five  miles  an  hour,  leaving  a  bad 


LITERATURE    TO-DAY  347 

smell  behind  us  and  seeing  nothing  in  front  for  our  blue 
goggles.  Every  journal,  or  catalogue,  or  tradesman's  bill 
we  touch  is  disfigured  with  coarse,  bad  photographs.  The 
grocer  puffs  his  wares,  the  tobacconist  puffs  his  cigars,  the 
quack  puffs  his  "diuretic  pill"  with  the  image  of  his  own 
ugly  mug.  Novels  have  to  be  short,  cheap,  "up-to-date," 
and  photographic.  On  the  stage  we  want  a  live  donkey 
and  real  smoke.  How  can  Literature  flourish  in  a  world  so 
mechanical,  so  commonplace,  so  uniform  ? 

If  Gibbon  or  Macaulay  were  to  publish  to-day,  the  aca- 
demic critics  would  jeer  at  them  for  not  knowing  Professor 
Rumpelstiltzkin's  last  pamphlet  on  the  "Dolichocephalic 
Races."  If  Scott  were  to  publish  Ivanhoe,  we  should  be 
told  it  was  "a  bad  joke";  old-fogyish  in  form  and  obsolete 
in  local  colour.  What  pays  now  for  romance  is  Divorce 
Court  scandal,  the  smart  set  on  a  motor-trip,  or  slum-talk 
in  the  East  End.  Photography  and  mechanics  have  forced 
Art,  Literature,  even  Society,  into  a  crude,  monotonous 
realism.  In  pictures,  in  books,  in  conversation,  what  we 
must  have  is  the  minute  reproduction  of  the  obvious,  com- 
monplace things  we  see  and  hear  every  day.  Imagination 
bores  us :  originality  puzzles  us :  quiet  grace  is  voted  "  in- 
sipid." When  Carlyle  in  1840  was  advocating  the  London 
Library  he  said:  —  "The  purveyor  of  popular  literature 
must  have  an  eye  to  the  prurient  appetite  of  the  great  million, 
and  furnish  them  with  the  kind  of  garbage  they  will  have. 
The  result  is  melancholy  —  making  bad  worse;  for  every 
bad  book  begets  an  appetite  for  reading  a  worse  one.  Thus 
we  come  to  the  age  of  pinch-beck  in  Literature."  What 
would  the  Sage  of  Chelsea  say  to-day  ? 


VIII 

"FORS   CLAVIGERA" 

The  final  Library  Edition  of  the  Works  of  John  Ruskin, 
in  thirty-six  volumes,  has  now  reached  his  great  serial  and 
autobiographical  medley  called  Fors  Clavigera.  More  than 
anything  "the  Master"  ever  wrote,  it  may  be  called  a  "hu- 
man document" — one  of  the  most  original,  most  frank, 
most  tantalising  in  all  modern  literature.  A  book  so  mysteri- 
ous has  been  judged  with  curiously  different  minds.  Noth- 
ing "so  notable,"  said  Carlyle.  "Watery  verbiage,"  said 
the  Spectator.  "Studies  in  reviling,"  said  a  fine  poet. 
"Ruskin's  'Hamlet'  and  also  his 'Apocalypse,'"  said  his 
biographer  in  the  "Men  of  Letters"  series;  and  the  editor 
himself  now  cites  and  adopts  that  judgment.  Whatever  else 
it  may  be,  this  huge  book  of  650,000  words,  written  month 
by  month  between  187 1  and  1884,  is  the  man,  John  Rus- 
kin's self. 

The  Introduction  to  Vol.  XXVII.  (pp.  17-90),  by  Mr. 
E.  T.  Cook,  contains  the  most  elaborate  biographic  study 
of  the  whole  series,  and  throws  new  and  invaluable  light  on 
this  extraordinary  torrent  of  self-revelation,  fierce  Jeremiads, 
and  dazzling  fantasies.  It  may  well  be  called  a  "Hamlet,'' 
an  "Apocalypse,"  for  it  is  now  the  profound  moan  of  a 
somewhat  morbid  genius,  now  the  inexplicable  vision  of 
some  inspired  prophet.  The  inexhaustible  labour  of  the 
editor  has  cleared  up  a  thousand  dark  allusions,  and  has 
traced  the  curve  of  these  fulminating  flashes  of  lurid  light. 
We  now  begin  to  see  the  mental  connection  between  wood 

348 


"fors  clavigera"  349 

hyacinths,  the  battle  of  Marathon,  and  the  match  tax. 
There  has  never  been  since  the  commentaries  on  Scripture, 
or  Cromwell's  Letters,  or  Coke  upon  Lyttelton,  any  editing 
done  with  such  minute  industry  and  scrupulous  reverence 
of  the  written  word.  And  the  written  word  Fors  still  remains 
one  of  the  most  Apocalyptic  in  our  literature.  Here  Ruskin 
is  only  by  fits  and  starts  the  expounder  of  Art.  Poetry, 
Education,  Religion  hold  the  first  place.  He  is  the  social 
reformer,  almost  the  Communist,  the  prophet  of  a  new 
Economic  Utopia,  the  Evangelist  of  a  new  Gospel  of  the 
Old  Faith. 

And  now,  as  one  who  has  deeply  enjoyed  Fors,  and,  per- 
haps, somewhat  excessively  rated  it  as  Ruskin's  central 
work,  I  am  bound  to  make  a  personal  confession  —  almost 
a  belated  recantation.  Like  the  rest  of  the  world,  even  of 
the  Ruskinian  world,  I  was  myself  far  too  busy  between 
the  years  187 1  and  1878  to  be  sending  yd.  every  month  to 
Keston  and  to  read  through  the  pamphlets  regularly,  even 
when  they  contained  paternal  rebukes  on  myself.  The  only 
Fors  I  ever  really  read  and  knew  was  the  edition  in  four 
volumes,  small  cr.  8vo.,  1896.  This  handy  edition  reduced 
the  eight  full  volumes  to  four  moderate  volumes  of  500 
pages,  omitted  all  the  Appendices,  and  much  curtailed  sun- 
dry parts  of  the  ninety-six  letters.  I  am  free  to  confess 
that  I  greatly  prefer  the  abridged  Fors  to  the  unadulterated 
torrent  we  now  get,  overlaid  with  cuttings  from  the  Daily 
Telegraph  and  provincial  prints,  stuffed  with  silly  letters 
from  anonymous  correspondents  and  the  gossip  of  aesthetic 
old  ladies.  The  abridged  and  bowdlerised  Fors  was  trivial 
and  desultory  enough  in  all  conscience.  But  the  "pure 
milk"  of  the  Ruskinian  word  is  to  me  a  puree  which  my 
palate  declines  to  approve. 

Xor  can  I  agree  with  the  view  that  Fors  should  be  read 


350  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

as  a  whole  consecutively.  It  may  be  judged  as  a  whole; 
but  as  to  reading  it  right  through,  one  might  as  well  try  to 
read  through  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  volume  by  volume. 
I  suppose  no  one  but  a  reviewer  has  ever  done  this,  and, 
I  fear,  not  all  of  them.  For  my  part,  I  read  it  through  in 
the  shorter  form  when  I  wrote  Ruskin's  Life;  and  I  have 
now  read  it  again  in  the  new  longer  form.  But  it  does  not 
gain  in  the  process.  The  incessant  digressions,  the  wild 
nights  of  fancy,  the  lyrical  eulogies  followed  by  furious 
anathemas  of  indispensable  things  and  illustrious  persons, 
and  all  this  incoherent  irony  and  commination  — ■  not  with 
the  merry  badinage  of  Elia  or  Titmarsh,  but  in  fierce  earnest 
and  passionate  hot-gospelling  —  make  Fors  a  book  to  dip 
into,  to  take  up  in  a  mood  as  desultory  as  that  of  the  writer, 
but  not  a  book  to  study  seriatim  and  to  digest  from  cover  to 
cover. 

Yet  to  open  it  in  the  same  "fortuitous"  way,  how  delight- 
ful, how  stimulating,  how  devotional  is  its  spirit !  We  see 
a  much-tried  soul,  to  whom  the  extreme  beauty  of  Nature 
and  of  Art  — ■  beauty  that  he  felt  with  an  intensity  of  passion 
that  none  of  us  can  reach  —  was  yet  dust  and  ashes  whilst 
man's  life  remained  so  sordid,  so  gross,  so  cruel,  whilst  man's 
cupidity  marred  and  vulgarised  God's  handiwork.  What 
a  noble  thirst  for  a  true  "education,"  a  real  training  of  heart 
and  character,  eye  and  nerve;  not  a  mechanical  readiness 
to  read  —  mere  printed  rubbish,  to  write  accounts  and  a 
merchant's  puffs  of  his  "faked"  wares!  What  a  deeply 
religious  spirit  lay  in  this  heart,  half  crushed  by  early  Calvin- 
ism and  then  bewildered  by  modern  rationalism,  which  it 
was  too  eager  ever  to  understand,  and  too  imaginative  ever 
to  study. 

If  one  would  see  how  serious,  how  practical,  how  truly 
spiritual  Ruskin's  teaching  could  be  at  its  best,  we  should 


FORS   CLAVIGERA 


351 


turn  to  Mr.  Jolly's  excellent  volume,  Ruskin  on  Education. 
Himself  an  expert  in  education,  as  one  of  H.M.  Inspectors  of 
Schools,  Mr.  Jolly  has  had  the  happy  idea  of  collecting  into 
one  little  volume  Ruskin's  teaching  on  this  subject,  mainly 
using  Fors.  It  was  a  fertile  thought,  and  has  been  well 
executed.  He  shows  us  how  Ruskin  conceived  Education, 
not  a  mechanical  trick  which  could  be,  and  too  often  is, 
misapplied,  but  a  moral  training  of  the  nature  along  with 
a  training  of  the  senses  and  the  bodily  powers.  Ruskin 
here,  as  Mr.  Jolly  shows,  came  nearer  to  Plato  than  any 
modern,  at  least  any  English,  teacher. 

And  yet,  when  one  has  recognised  all  this  noble  spirit,  all 
this  genius,  this  heroic  martyrdom  of  the  social  reformer 
who  flung  away  his  fortune,  his  life  and  peace,  his  passion 
for  Art,  in  order  to  purify  the  world  around  him  —  what 
a  sense  of  failure,  of  waste,  of  despair  rings  through  all  the 
lyrics  and  ironies  of  Fors,  as  the  undertone  or  key  whereon 
its  melodies  are  built.  He  who  was  for  ever  preaching  to  us 
humility,  submission,  trust,  was  the  most  ungovernable, 
wilful,  arrogant  of  men  —  in  a  high  sense,  the  most  utter 
egotist.  He  who  cried  out  to  men  to  obey  and  to  follow, 
would  follow  or  obey  —  no  one  but  himself.  He  who  was 
ever  calling  on  us  to  learn  would  never  learn  anything  but 
in  his  own  way  —  all  de  novo  —  ab  ovo  —  as  if  no  man  before 
him  had  ever  learned  anything,  or  ever  taught  anything. 

'Twas  a  grand  nature,  a  rare  genius,  sadly  trammelled 
by  a  vicious  education,  an  obsolete  religion,  an  indomitable 
self-will  —  cruelly  wasted  by  an  ill-regulated  passion  which 
only  too  often  broke  through  the  bounds  of  perfect  sanity. 


IX 

THE   CENTURY   CLUB 

{From  "  The  Cornhill  Magazine,"  1903) 

The  pleasant  paper  in  the  August  number  of  The  Cornhill 
Magazine,  1903,  wherein  Sir  Algernon  West  recorded  a  few 
recollections  of  the  Cosmopolitan  Club,  very  naturally  sug- 
gested to  some  veterans  of  the  Century  Club  of  the  'Sixties 
to  gather  up  stray  reminiscences  of  that  society  before  the 
surviving  members  follow  it  into  the  great  majority.  The 
Century  Club  cannot  boast  the  antiquity  of  fifty  years  claimed 
by  the  Cosmopolitan;  it  was  merged  more  than  twenty 
years  ago  in  the  National  Liberal  Club;  nor  can  it  pretend 
to  such  a  roll  of  celebrities  as  Sir  Algernon's  graceful  memory 
can  recall. 

The  Century  Club  was  essentially  a  political,  not  a  social, 
club,  with  a  very  definite  purpose  and  a  strongly  marked 
colour.  That  colour  was  the  ardent  faith  of  the  younger 
politicians  who  believed  in  Gladstone,  Bright,  Mill,  Goldwin 
Smith,  John  Morley,  and  Herbert  Spencer,  in  the  Fighting 
'Sixties.  Those  were  the  days  of  the  "  Essays  and  Reviews" 
and  Dr.  Colenso  polemics  in  the  Church,  of  the  fight  to  open 
the  Universities  to  Dissenters,  the  fight  over  National  Edu- 
cation, about  Church  Rates,  State  Churches,  and  Reform 
of  the  Suffrage.  It  embraced  the  period  of  Mr.  Gladstone's 
ascendancy  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  his  first  two 
ministries,  the  Reform  Act  of  1867,  the  Irish  Church  Dis- 
establishment Act  of  1869,  the  Education  Act  of  1870,  the 

352 


THE    CENTURY    CLUB  353 

Irish  Land  Act  of  1870,  and  the  long  struggle  over  the 
Trades-Union  laws,  which  was  closed  (only  temporarily,  it 
now  seems)  by  the  Acts  of  187 1  and  1875. 

The  resignation  of  the  Liberal  leadership  by  Mr.  Glad- 
stone in  1875,  the  apotheosis  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  in  1876, 
and  the  Imperial  Durbar  he  inaugurated  in  the  years  from 
1876  to  1880,  threw  a  certain  damper  over  the  Century  Club, 
which  had  lost  many  of  its  foremost  politicians.  And  on 
the  foundation  of  the  Eighty  Club  the  Century  was  ulti- 
mately merged  —  we  may  say,  perhaps,  was  developed, 
enlarged,  and  glorified  in  the  sumptuous  palace  at  White- 
hall Place,  where  its  surviving  members  utter  their  hopeful 
Floreat. 

I  was  myself  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Century  Club  — 
indeed  I  think  that  I  first  originated  the  idea,  which  was 
talked  over  in  my  chambers  in  New  Square,  Lincoln's  Inn, 
in  1866.  Among  those  who  took  an  active  part  in  the  foun- 
dation were  Charles  S.  Roundell,  who  had  been  secretary  to 
the  Jamaica  Commission  and  to  the  Universities  Commission, 
who  was  secretary  also  to  Lord  Spencer  in  Ireland  in  1869, 
and  has  represented  Grantham  in  1880,  and  the  Skipton 
Division  of  the  West  Riding  in  1892.  Another  was  Henry- 
Yates  Thompson,  well  known  for  his  munificent  founda- 
tions, who  contested  South-west  Lancashire  as  colleague  of 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  1868.  And  one  of  the  most  active  pro- 
moters was  the  Hon.  E.  Lyulph  Stanley,  long  Vice-Chair- 
man of  the  London  School  Board,  who  represented  Oldham 
in  1880,  and  is  now  Lord  Stanley  of  Alderley  (1908).  All 
four  of  us  were  young  barristers  with  some  leisure,  and  were 
in  close  touch  with  the  politicians,  members,  and  journalists 
in  the  party  of  Gladstone,  Bright,  Mill,  and  Forster. 

All  of  these  statesmen  are  gone  now.  Their  place  and 
their  party  know  them  no  more.     As  in  1908  I  turn  back 


354 


REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 


'in   memory  some   forty  years,   I   am  sadly   reminded  how 
many  of  our  comrades  are  gone,  how  wide  is  the  gulf  between 
those  days  and  our  own,  how  different  are  the  ideals  in  the 
ascendant,    the    dominant    spirits,    the    burning    questions. 
How  we  should  have  shouted  in  derision  at  any  one  who,  in 
1867,  had  talked  of  converting  the  people  to  the  gospel  of 
''Dear  Bread  and  Glory!"     The  ideal  of  the  "Century" 
was  not  an  imitation  of  the  Cosmopolitan,  except  in  form. 
It  was  to  uphold  definite  and  very  strict  principles  of  political 
and  religious  liberalism.     It  was  to  help  fight  the  battles 
which  Gladstone  and  Bright,  Mill  and  Spencer,  were  fight- 
ing in  Parliament  and  in  public  opinion.     It  was  to  have,  not 
a  social  character,  but  a  political  and  intellectual  character. 
It  was  to  consist  not  of  celebrities,  or  of  pleasant  fellows,  but 
of  keen  workers  in  the  causes  of  freedom  of  thought  and 
popular  progress.     Like  the  Cosmopolitan  Club,  it  met   at 
9  p.m.  on  Wednesday  and  on  Sunday  nights.     It  met  only 
to  smoke,  to  talk,  and  to  organise.     The  only  refreshments 
were  mineral  waters;    I  am  inclined  to  think  — not  even 
whisky. 

Adopting  the  material  form  of  the  Cosmopolitan  Club 
so  far  as  meeting  only  for  conversation  on  two  nights  of  the 
week,  it  differed  from  the  Cosmopolitan  and  most  other 
clubs  I  have  known  in  being  a  mere  political  and  latitudi- 
narian  tabagie,  as  Carlyle  calls  King  Frederick's  smoking 
council.  I  have  never  touched  tobacco  in  my  life,  except 
in  the  reek  of  other  men's  weeds ;  but  such  was  my  reforming 
zeal  in  my  hot  youth,  that  I  consented  to  be  poisoned  nightly 
in  the  good  cause.  None  of  us,  I  think,  were  smokers; 
but  we  agreed  to  make  this  concession  to  human  weakness, 
though  we  barred  alcohol,  I  think,  out  of  regard  for  Sir 
Wilfrid  Lawson.  It  was  understood  that  candidates  were 
not  to  be  ineligible  simply  because  they  did  not  employ 


THE    CENTURY    CLUB  355 

a  fashionable  tailor,  and  working  men  were  to  be  as  welcome 
as  noble  lords.  Every  member  of  the  club  was  to  be  free 
to  address  any  other  member,  with  or  without  introduction 
or  acquaintance.  And  every  view  was  to  be  tolerated,  for 
freedom  of  speech  was  an  absolute  principle. 

I  think  the  Club  began,  and  existed  some  years,  without 
anv  printed  rules,  and  indeed  without  rules  at  all.  The 
preliminary  meetings  were  held  in  Lincoln's  Inn,  I  think  in 
the  chambers  of  H.  Yates  Thompson,  who  was  the  first 
honorary  secretary.  Among  the  earliest  members  were 
(Lords)  Bowen,  Davey,  (Sir)  George  Osborne  Morgan, 
George  Shaw-Lefevre,  Henry  Fawcett,  Sir  Charles  Dilke, 
M.P.,  Thomas  Hughes,  M.P.,  Mr.  Leonard  Courtney, 
Lord  Edmond  Fitzmaurice,  Sir  George  Trevelyan,  A.  C. 
Humphreys-Owen,  M.P.  for  Montgomeryshire,  who  was  the 
second  honorary  secretary ;  T.  B.  Potter,  M.P.  for  Rochdale, 
the  friend  of  Cobden  and  Bright,  and  founder  of  the  Cobden 
Club;  James  Bryce,  M.P.,  (Sir)  Leslie  Stephen,  Professor 
Huxley,  Professor  Beesly,  Montague  Crackanthorpe,  K.C., 
(Sir)  Charles  Cookson,  Mr.  (Justice)  Wright,  John  Morley 
—  and  of  course  Lord  Houghton. 

The  Club  was  unlike  ordinary  Clubs,  either  political  or 
social,  in  that  it  offered  nothing  but  a  talk  on  two  nights  in 
the  week,  when  Parliament  was  not  sitting,  and  was  a  kind 
of  Caucus  to  effect  definite  political,  social,  and  ecclesiastical 
reforms,  without  distinctions  of  class,  or  tastes,  or  social 
habits.  I  was  myself  a  member  of  the  Cosmopolitan  Club 
in  1871,  and  have  been  a  member  of  the  Reform  Club; 
of  the  "Dominicans,"  who  dined  on  Sunday  night  at  the 
"Cock,"  under  the  inspiration  of  Mr.  Mill;  of  the  Meta- 
physical Society,  under  that  of  Tennyson ;  and  of  the  Political 
Economy  Club.  But  my  experience  is  that  the  Century 
differed  from  all,  in  that  there  were  no  meals  to  be  had  in  it, 


356  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

no  blackballing  on  grounds  of  personal  fancy,  and  there  were 
practical  measures  in  Church  and  State  to  be  discussed  and 
supported.  If  the  Club  expired  long  ago,  it  was  because 
its  work  was  done,  and  almost  every  purpose  it  sought  to 
effect  had  been  fully  accomplished.  We  are  in  a  different 
world  to-day  —  antres  hommes,  autres  moeurs.  And  now  that 
I  have  taken  my  name  off  these  and  many  such  societies  and 
clubs  —  now  that,  in  the  peace  of  my  rural  retirement,  I  am 
trying  to  recall  the  roaring  'Sixties  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  earlier 
administrations,  I  see  dimly  through  the  haze  of  time  that 
we  played  an  honest  and,  I  trust,  a  useful  part. 

We  were  anything  but  "Passive  Resisters"  in  those  days; 
and  of  course  we  soon  drew  the  fire  of  Conservatives  and 
Theologians  of  all  shades.  We  were  roundly  abused,  and 
absurdly  caricatured  as  Nihilists,  Atheists,  and  general 
Firebrands.  One  peculiarity  of  the  Club  was  that  its 
principles  were  for  emancipation  at  once  political,  social, 
and  religious.  In  that  age  of  agitation  about  Tariff  Reform, 
Labour  Laws,  Hyde  Park  Meetings,  Church  Rates,  Dis- 
establishment, Religious  Tests,  and  Indian  Imperialism, 
when  Mr.  Mill  sat  in  Parliament  for  Westminster,  and  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  rejected  at  Oxford,  the  political,  social,  and 
religious  questions  were  inextricably  mixed.  Most  of  the 
founders  of  the  "Century"  were,  or  had  been,  Fellows  of 
Colleges,  and  they  were  in  close  touch  with  the  Reforming 
party  in  the  Universities.  It  was  natural  that  the  Church 
party  in  them  should  look  with  suspicion  upon  the  London 
Club.  One  of  the  best  epigrams  of  the  day  was  a  sentence 
from  Tacitus,  which  Dean  Mansel  proposed  as  a  motto  for 
the  Club  —  Corrumpere  et  corrumpi  SAECULUM  vocatur. 

Of  course,  the  Oxford  myth  that  the  Club  was  a  society 
of  Freethinkers,  banded  together  to  destroy  the  Church, 
was  a  ridiculous  gibe.     Many  Liberal  clergymen  were  mem- 


THE    CENTURY    CLUB  357 

bers,  such  as  William  Rogers,  "Bishop  of  Bishopsgate," 
Mark  Pattison,  Rector  of  Lincoln,  Professor  Thorold  Rogers, 
the  present  Dean  of  Ripon,  the  Rev.  Llewellyn  Davies,  a 
recent  Vice-Chancellor  of  Oxford,  and  the  Rev.  Samuel 
Harvey  Reynolds,  a  well-known  journalist  and  author,  and 
other  University  Professors  and  Tutors.  I  think  most  of 
those  who  took  active  part  in  freeing  the  L  niversities  from 
religious  tests  were  members  of  the  Club,  as  were  also  most 
of  the  writers  in  the  two  volumes,  Essays  on  Reform  and 
Essays  for  a  Reformed  Parliament,  of  1S67.  The  Club  wTas 
for  some  years  a  sort  of  recruiting  ground  whence  were 
gathered  members  of  the  Cobden  Club,  and  writers  in  the 
Liberal  Press.  Mr.  Thomas  Bayley  Potter,  M.P.,  was  a 
frequent  attendant,  as  were  Frank  H.  Hill,  lately  Editor  of 
the  Daily  News,  Mr.  Herbert  Paul,  Sir  John  Macdonell, 
and  Mr.  Samuel  Butler,  the  ingenious  author  of  Erewhon. 
Many  of  the  men  active  in  politics,  literature,  and  journalism 
on  the  Liberal  side,  between  1865  and  1880,  were  members 
of  the  Club.  But  as,  in  my  rustic  solitude,  I  cannot  get 
access  to  any  printed  lists  of  members,  I  am  unable  to  give 
a  more  complete  or  accurate  roll. 

I  do  not  remember  that,  in  the  earlier  days  at  least,  there 
were  any  printed  documents  at  all.  There  wTas  a  candidates' 
book  in  manuscript,  which  I  am  told,  when  the  Club  was 
wound  up.  fetched  £6:  16:6  at  auction  for  the  autograph 
market.  And  cheap  at  the  price;  for  the  book  must  have 
had  some  interesting  signatures.  One  of  the  most  regular 
attendants  and  one  of  the  loudest  talkers  was  the  late  Henry 
Fawcett,  who  would  occasionally  cause  some  laughter  by 
giving  his  opinion  about  persons  who  were  in  the  room  and 
within  hearing.  But  it  was  Liberty  Hall;  and  all  opinions 
and  all  persons  were  equally  free. 

The    mode    of    election    was    peculiar.     Members    were 


358  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

selected  by  a  small  committee,  which  had  to  be  unanimous. 
There  was  no  ballot,  but  one  veto  barred  the  election;  and 
candidates  could  be  continually  submitted  for  selection  by 
the  committee.  I  believe  that  Lord  Davey,  and  at  least 
three  others  of  the  present  Judges,  and  several  Privy  Coun- 
cillors of  to-day,  have  at  times  served  on  the  committee  of 
selection,  as,  I  think,  did  Professor  Huxley,  Sir  Charles 
Dilke,  the  late  Warden  of  Merton,  and  the  present  Lord 
Stanley  of  Alderley.  The  sine  qua  non  was  not  so  much 
eminence,  clubbable  gifts,  conversational  brilliance  —  but 
the  pure  milk  of  Liberal  doctrine.  As  tests  of  the  "pure 
milk"  of  the  Liberal  Word  vary  a  good  deal,  and  as  public 
men  not  unfrequently  change  their  views  (as  indeed  we  see 
to-day !),  it  is  to  be  feared  that  so  rigid  a  scrutiny  caused 
some  ructions. 

Peers,  as  such,  were  not  excluded,  but  their  Liberalism 
was  closely  tested.  The  seventh  Lord  Airlie,  Lord  Amberley, 
Lord  Brassey,  the  inevitable  Lord  Houghton,  and  others, 
were  accepted.  There  is  a  "saga"  that  a  well-known  Duke, 
who  once  sat  as  a  Liberal  in  the  House  of  Commons,  was 
held  to  be  not  quite  up  to  the  high  temperature  of  the  Radical 
thermometer.  Our  dear  old  Lord  Houghton  once  gave  us 
an  impassioned  appeal   "to  give  our  days  and  nights  to 

literature," 

Vos  exemplaria  Graeca 
Nocturna  versate  manu,  versate  diurna. 

"You  should  feed  on  the  best  authors,  go  to  sleep  on  them, 
dream  of  them,"  said  he,  in  a  sort  of  after-dinner  speech. 
The  discussion  went  on  till  a  speaker  observed  his  Lordship 
fast  asleep  in  his  chair  over  the  fire.  "Yes,"  he  said,  "the 
noble  Lord  is  still  dreaming  of  the  best  authors." 

The  Club  began  its  meetings  in  a  rather  hugger-mugger 
way,  as  a  casual  lodger :  first  of  the  Alpine  Club  near  Charing 


THE    CENTURY    CLUB  359 

Cross;  then  in  the  rooms  of  a  "Captain"  somebody,  who 
was  said  to  be  a  bill-discounter ;  and  eventually  in  Pall  Mall 
Place,  in  an  old  seventeenth-century  room  which  was  vera- 
ciously  affirmed  (by  the  owner)  to  have  been  once  the 
drawing-room  of  Nell  Gwyn.  The  Club  thereupon  broke 
out  into  Ladies'  Evenings,  those  days  being  the  age  of  Mr. 
Mill  and  the  "Subjection  of  Women."  The  subjection  of 
Man,  at  any  rate  of  Century  Club  Man,  followed  not  long 
after  these  orgies.  The  founders  married,  got  too  old,  or 
at  least  declined  to  debate  Bills  in  Parliament  at  2  A.M. 
I  and  others  took  off  our  names.  I  am  told  that  the  Club 
was  eventually  expanded  into  the  National  Liberal  Club, 
which,  along  with  the  Eighty  Club,  now  extends  its  hospi- 
tality to  such  survivors  of  the  "Century"  as  did  not  slide 
into  Unionism  at  the  great  secession  of  1885-86. 


P.S.  —  Other  members,  I  am  told,  were :  — 

Walter  Bagehot.  Vernon  Lushington,  K.C. 

Dr.  E.  Caird.  Walter  Pater. 

(Sir)  Andrew  Clark.  (Lord  Justice)  Rigby. 

Arthur  Cohen,  K.C.  Lord  St.  Maur. 

Hon.  Henry  Cowper.  Henry  S.  Smith. 

(Sir)  Henry  Cunningham.  Thomas  Chenery. 

(Sir)  George  Dasent.  Herbert  Spencer. 

Albert  Dicey,  K.C.  (Sir)  James  Stansfeld,  M.P. 

(Sir)  M.  E.  Grant-Duff.  J.  Addington  Symonds. 

(Sir)  Joshua  Fitch.  Professor  John  Westlake. 

Sir  Alexander  Grant,  Bart.  James  Woolner. 

(Sir)  Courtenay  Ilbert.  Sir  George  Young,  Bart. 

(Sir)  Godfrey  Lushington.  Albert  Rutson. 


X 

SIR   LESLIE   STEPHEN 

In  Memoriam  (1904) 

{From  "  The  Cornhill  Magazine"  April,  1904) 

Not  a  few  of  us  have  lost  in  Leslie  Stephen  a  wise  and 
generous  spirit  —  one  who  recalls  to  us  forty  years  of  strenu- 
ous devotion  to  letters,  a  memory  which  goes  back  to  the 
stalwart  men  of  the  mid-Victorian  epoch  —  those  spacious 
days  of  Mill  and  Spencer,  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  Matthew 
Arnold  and  Stevenson,  Tennyson  and  Browning,  Bright  and 
Gladstone.  They  are  all  gone.  And  he  who  knew  them  all, 
and  at  times  interpreted  them  to  us  and  at  times  would  wrestle 
with  them  himself,  is  gone  to  join  them  in  the  true  Temple 
of  Peace  and  Conciliation  —  where  those  who  have  taught 
aright  speak  still  with  a  more  solemn  voice,  and,  by  some 
mysterious  influence,  speak  henceforth  with  a  more  mellow 
and  harmonious  voice. 

As,  on  Wednesday,  February  24,  in  the  sombre  chapel  at 
Hendon,  the  cofhn  stood  on  the  bier  in  its  violet  covering 
before  the  portal  of  the  crematorium,  the  profound  silence 
was  charged  deep  with  a  thousand  memories  to  the  friends 
who  were  gathered  for  the  last  time  around  him.  There 
were  men  and  women  who  had  grown  to  old  age  in  close 
touch  with  him  —  who  had  worked  with  him,  worked  for 
him,   argued   with  him,   received  help  from  him,   enjoyed 

360 


SIR   LESLIE    STEPHEN  361 

life  with  him,  who  had  loved  him,  whom  he  had  loved  — 
men  who  had  served  the  State,  or  served  the  people,  who  had 
governed  provinces,  formed  schools,  written  their  names  in 
the  roll  of  statesmanship,  literature,  and  science  for  the  best 
part  of  two  generations.  Stephen's  last  book,  composed,  we 
might  say,  on  his  very  death-couch,  appeared  to  the  public 
almost  on  the  day  of  his  funeral.  He  died  literally  in  harness, 
as  the  Roman  emperor  said  a  general  should  die,  erect  and 
in  his  armour.  But  the  inner  memory  of  Leslie  Stephen 
will  remain  for  us  his  coevals  as  a  stalwart  of  the  mid- 
Victorian  age. 

I  have  been  asked  for  a  few  reminiscences  of  Stephen, 
more  especially  as  to  his  relations  to  the  Cornhill  Magazine, 
begun  by  his  father-in-law,  \V.  M.  Thackeray,  and  to  the 
enterprising  house  with  which  he  was  so  long  associated. 
Without  pretending  to  be  one  of  his  intimates,  my  friendship 
with  him  dates  from  his  first  settling  in  London,  some  forty 
years  ago;  and  ever  since  we  have  been  treading  somewhat 
similar  paths.  He  was  my  junior  in  age  by  one  year.  We 
both  were  students  at  King's  College  at  nearly  the  same  time. 
We  had  many  friends  in  common,  and  saw  much  the  same 
society.  We  belonged  to  the  same  clubs.  We  were  both 
the  presidents  of  ethical  societies,  and  occasionally  spoke 
on  the  same  platform.  I  heard  Jiirn  speak  at  the  Alpine 
Club,  and  had  many  a  mountain  walk  with  him.  We 
ascended  together  Mont  Blanc  with  his  two  famous  Ober- 
land  guides,  Melchior  and  Jacob  Anderegg,  with  whom  I, 
too,  have  had  many  a  glorious  climb;  I  have  tramped  with 
him,  also,  on  the  Surrey  Downs,  and  in  many  a  mid-day 
jaunt  in  Kensington  Gardens,  or  in  some  midnight  stroll 
home  from  the  Cosmopolitan,  or  the  Century  Club,  or 
Metaphysical  Society.  We  were  for  some  thirty  years  col- 
leagues in   the  management   of  the  London  Library.      We 


362  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

used  to  meet  at  one  time  daily  at  the  British  Museum,  for 
we  have  both  known  the  cares  of  an  editor;  and  I  even 
planned,  edited,  and  in  part  indited  a  minuscule  dictionary 
of  universal  biography,  a  mere  lilliputian  contemporary  — 
longissimo  intervallo  —  of  the  stupendous  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography.  With  no  pretensions  myself  to  his  wit, 
his  learning,  his  judgement,  and  prodigious  industry,  it  is 
with  heart-felt  sympathy  that  I  try  to  jot  down  my  memories 
of  one  whom  I  respected  so  entirely  and  admired  so  heartily ; 
with  whose  life  I  was  in  touch  at  many  points. 

For  the  ancestors,  family,  parentage,  and  young  life  of 
Leslie  Stephen  we  happily  have  what  is  for  the  earliest  years 
a  chapter  almost  of  his  own  autobiography,  in  the  opening  of 
his  memoir  of  Sir  J.  Fitzjames  Stephen,  his  brother.  It  is 
one  of  his  most  delightful  and  genial  pieces.  In  telling  us 
all  that  he  could  learn,  and  all  he  thought  we  would  care  to 
hear,  as  to  the  origin  of  the  Stephen  family,  as  to  their  charac- 
teristics, ways,  and  ups  and  downs  of  life,  Leslie  was  prac- 
tically writing  it  for  himself  as  much  as  for  his  brother,  the 
judge.  Much  more  is  that  the  case  in  his  admirable  picture 
of  his  father,  Sir  James  Stephen,  and  of  his  mother,  the 
daughter  of  an  almost  historic  family  of  Puritan  ministers 
of  the  Gospel.  Leslie,  far  more  than  Fitzjames,  inherited 
his  moral  and  intellectual  nature  from  his  parents  and  their 
ancestors.  Like  the  Gladstones,  the  Carlyles,  the  Ruskins, 
the  Stevensons,  and  the  Mills,  the  Stephens  were  a  family 
of  Scotch  Lowland  descent.  From  his  father  he  drew  his 
literary  versatility  and  grace,  his  industry,  his  tolerant, 
precise,  and  judicial  instinct.  From  his  mother  he  drew  the 
grit  and  courage  with  which  the  Verms  for  three  centuries 
witnessed  to  the  Truth  —  from  his  mother  came  the  affec- 
tionate spirit  which  the  grit  never  repressed  nor  even  con- 
cealed —  and  that  paramount  grasp  of  ethical  honesty,  that 


SIR   LESLIE    STEPHEN  363 

disdain  of  vain  parade,  which  was  his  most  salient  charac- 
teristic through  life. 

The  famous  motto  of  the  Dictionary  of  Biography  —  "no 
flowers"  —  was  quite  typical  of  his  whole  nature.  And  one 
who  ventures  to  write  a  reminiscence  of  him,  now  that  he  is 
no  more,  is  bound  to  keep  this  injunction  ever  in  mind.  We 
went  to  Hendon  to  say  farewell  to  our  friend  —  not  to  praise 
him;  and  we  should  have  been  hurt  had  we  seen  his  coffin 
smothered  in  wreaths  and  what  the  reporters  call  "floral 
tributes."  Nor  shall  my  tribute  be  floral.  As  he  asked  once, 
with  some  indignation  and  with  unusual  asperity:  "Can 
you  not  praise  the  dead  man  sufficiently  unless  you  tell  lies 
about  him?"  No  one  ever  more  disdained  superlatives, 
and  more  insisted  for  himself  and  for  others  that  the  plain 
truth  should  be  set  down  in  the  simplest  words. 

Stephen's  connection  with  the  Cornhill  Magazine,  with  its 
editorial  work,  and  with  the  late  Mr.  George  Smith  and  his 
publishing  house,  was  very  long  and  very  close.  For  some 
seventeen  years  (1866-1883)  he  was  a  constant  writer  in 
those  pages.  For  eleven  years  (1871-1882)  he  was  Editor. 
He  married  the  daughter  of  the  first  editor,  W.  M.  Thackeray, 
whose  other  daughter,  Lady  Ritchie,  long  continued  to  con- 
tribute. When  Mr.  George  Smith  decided  to  publish  the 
great  undertaking  known  as  the  Dictionary  of  National 
Biography,  Stephen  retired  from  the  Cornhill  to  become  the 
editor  of  the  Dictionary.  It  was  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine 
that  appeared  the  series  of  papers  which  afterwards  became 
one  of  his  best  books,  together  with  a  vast  number  of  other 
essays,  known  or  unknown,  collected  in  volumes  or  not 
reprinted. 

I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  consulting  the  careful  record 
of  every  article  and  every  writer  in  the  Magazine,  kept  with 
extreme  care  and  accuracy  by  Mr.  George  Smith  in  his  own 


364  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

hand.  These  monthly  diaries,  so  punctually  and  methodi- 
cally kept  by  the  head  of  a  great  house  of  business  over  so 
long  a  period,  form  a  striking  proof  of  the  zeal  and  thought 
which  the  famous  publisher  bestowed  on  his  literary  under- 
takings. In  studying  the  catalogue  of  the  books  of  standard 
reputation  which  first  appeared  in  this  monthly  serial,  and 
in  going  over  the  list  of  the  contributors,  with  so  large  a 
proportion  of  the  best  writers  of  the  Victorian  age,  it  is  note- 
worthy how  little  there  is  of  merely  fugitive  work,  and  how 
largely  the  Magazine  has  been  the  cradle  of  some  of  the  best 
literature  of  its  time. 

Stephen's  first  pieces  in  the  Magazine  seem  to  have  been 
in  1866 — one  on  "American  Humour,"  and  another  on 
"A  Tour  in  Transylvania."  I  think  the  first  was  that  which 
introduced  English  readers  to  some  of  those  familiar  bits  of 
American  drollery  which  are  still  current.  In  the  next  year 
(that  of  his  marriage)  came  the  delightful  paper  called  "The 
Regrets  of  a  Mountaineer,"  which  we  all  know  in  the  Play- 
ground of  Europe,  published  in  1871,  and  frequently  reprinted. 
The  serio-comic  chagrin  of  the  veteran  mountaineer,  as  he 
ruefully  watches  others  climbing  the  snowfields  he  cannot 
now  reach,  owing  to  "circumstances  he  need  not  explain"  — 
(we  easily  see  that  he  was  then  on  a  honeymoon  trip) ;  his 
pathos  over  the  joys  which  were  denied  him :  — 

A  sorrow's  crown  of  sorrow  is  remembering  happier  things. 

This  is,  indeed,  delicious. 

All  Stephen's  Alpine  pieces  are  delightful,  full  of  his 
"saving  common  sense,"  his  hatred  of  superlatives  and  ec- 
statics,  with  his  sound  advice  that  the  best  amateur  climber 
is  inferior  to  an  average  peasant,  with  his  deep  passion  for 
Nature,  and  his  hearty  sympathy  with  the  Swiss  guide  at  his 
best.     Of  all  these  pieces  I  most  enjoy  "Sunset  on  Mont 


SIR    LESLIE    STEPHEN  365 

Blanc,"  published  in  the  Cornhill,  October  1873.  Only 
practised  climbers  can  understand  the  difficulties  of  watching 
the  sun  set  in  August  from  the  actual  summit  of  Mont  Blanc, 
and  then  returning  in  the  dark  —  difficulties  which  Stephen 
neither  conceals  nor  exaggerates.  But  the  piece  has  a  depth 
of  thought,  a  solemnity,  even  a  poetry,  which  is  too  rare  in 
his  critical  pieces. 

Stephen's  long  series  of  critical  studies  of  the  eighteenth 
century  writers  began  in  1868,  with  "Richardson"  and  "De 
Foe"  (the  Cornhill  Magazine,  January  and  March);  but 
the  "Hours  in  a  Library"  was  not  opened  until  May  1871. 
Throughout  the  year  1869,  the  Magazine  was  constantly 
occupied  with  the  papers  by  a  "Cynic."  "The  Cynic's 
Apology"  opened  in  May  1869.  Then  came  "Idolatry," 
"Useless  Knowledge,"  "The  Decay  of  Murder,"  "National 
Antipathies,"  "The  Uses  of  Fools,"  "Social  Slavery," 
"Literary  Exhaustion,"  and  many  others.  He  closed  the 
"Cynic"  series  on  becoming  editor,  and,  I  think,  did  not 
reissue  them.  He  was  right.  They  were  full  of  Stephen's 
genius  of  common  sense,  his  quaint  humour,  his  contempt  for 
extravagance,  his  disgust  for  false  sentiment  and  artificial 
gush ;  but  they  are  not  his  best,  nor  do  they  reflect  his  higher 
thought.  Leslie  was  no  cynic;  he  had  no  love  for  cynics; 
he  thoroughly  saw  of  what  affectation  and  egoism  professed 
cynicism  is  manufactured.  Leslie  was  closer  to  Thackeray 
and  Lowell  than  to  Swift.  He  had  a  deep  vein  of  sentiment 
and  enthusiasm,  which  he  kept  battened  down  in  the  hold. 
The  Cynic  papers  are  worth  rereading,  but  they  do  not  add 
to  his  reputation,  nor  do  they  truly  represent  his  mind. 

It  seems  that  Stephen  began  to  edit  the  Cornhill  Magazine 
in  April  187 1,  and  during  the  next  ten  years  he  contributed  the 
"Hours  in  a  Library,"  which  has  been  so  often  reissued,  and 
forms,  perhaps,  his  most  popular  and  characteristic  work. 


366  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

And  during  the  same  period  he  contributed  the  four  papers, 
"Rambles  among  Books,"  1880-1882.  The  "Hours  in  a 
Library,"  and  the  "History  of  English  Thought  in  the 
Eighteenth  Century,"  the  volumes  on  Pope,  Johnson,  Swift, 
and  George  Eliot,  are  so  well  known,  that  nothing  need  here 
be  said  of  them,  and  they  are  studies  far  too  elaborate  to 
be  discussed  in  these  hasty  reminiscences.  What  I  would 
specially  commend  is  the  great  body  of  excellent  and  perma- 
nent literature  which  the  Cornhill  Magazine  contained  during 
Stephen's  time  as  editor.  These  included  "Literature  and 
Dogma,"  and  several  essays  by  Matthew  Arnold,  poems 
by  R.  Browning,  W.  M.  Thackeray  (posthumous),  Sir  F. 
Doyle,  and  Alfred  Austin.  There  were  romances  by  George 
Meredith,  Miss  Thackeray,  Erckmann-Chatrian,  Charles 
Lever,  Mrs.  Oliphant,  W.  Black,  R.  D.  Blackmore,  Thomas 
Hardy,  Henry  James,  Mrs.  Lynn  Linton,  and  James  Payn. 
Most  of  these  romances  continue  to  hold  the  public;  and 
some  of  them  are  among  the  best  and  most  popular  achieve- 
ments of  their  authors.  But  that  of  which  the  public  is 
perhaps  less  aware  is  the  great  number  of  essays  contributed 
by  R.  L.  Stevenson  and  W.  E.  Henley.  It  was  one  of 
Stephen's  most  cherished  memories  that  he  had  discovered 
and  encouraged  the  rare  gifts  of  these  two  men,  whose  lit- 
erary career  had  opened  under  such  crushing  difficulties 
of  poverty  and  ill-health. 

Altogether  I  reckon  that  Stephen  contributed  to  the 
Cornhill  Magazine,  from  1866  to  1883  inclusive,  forty  articles 
on  general  subjects,  apart  from  the  critical  and  biographical 
studies  collected  in  his  published  works.  Several  of  these, 
I  think,  might  with  advantage  be  reissued.  They  deal  with 
natural  scenery,  topography,  social  and  ethical  criticism, 
literature  and  the  writers  of  the  day.  As  befitted  a  mis- 
cellany of  the  kind,  they  hardly  touch  on  politics,  science, 


SIR    LESLIE    STEPHEN  367 

philosophy,  or  religion.  Among  the  most  interesting  essays 
are,  I  think,  those  entitled  "Useless  Knowledge,"  with  its 
humorous  proposal  for  a  new  Society  for  the  Suppression  of 
Useless  Knowledge  (the  S.S.U.K.),  which,  he  said,  would 
give  us  more  leisure  to  learn  what  would  be  of  some  use. 
"Social  Slavery,"  "Our  Civilisation,"  "Public  Schools," 
"International  Prejudices,"  "Art  and  Morality,"  "Criticism 
by  a  Critic,"  "The  Moral  Elements  in  Literature"  —  all 
have  some  excellent  things,  full  of  acuteness,  humour,  wis- 
dom, and  fine  discrimination. 

In  his  published  works  Stephen  wrote  at  large  on  phi- 
losophy, ethics,  and  religion,  but  nothing  on  politics,  art,  or 
science.  The  latter  were  subjects  from  which  he  kept  steadily 
aloof  —  not  at  all  from  indifference,  but  from  a  conscientious 
sense  that  he  had  never  given  his  mind  to  them,  and  had  an 
almost  morbid  horror  of  appearing  to  dogmatise  in  any  study 
in  which  he  could  not  pretend  to  be  a  "doctor."  In  his 
History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  his 
Science  of  Ethics,  The  English  Utilitarians,  An  Agnostic's 
Apology,  and  in  Religion  and  Ethics,  Stephen  treats  at  great 
length,  and  with  much  elaboration,  the  common  ground  of 
morals,  philosophy,  and  religion.  His  general  point  of  view 
is  that  of  Bentham,  Mill,  Spencer,  and  Henry  Sidgwick,  with 
some  affinity  to  Huxley,  Darwin,  John  Morley,  and  Comte. 
Not  that  he  can  be  called  a  follower  of  any  one,  or  an  entire 
believer  in  any  system.  His  task  was  mainly  expository  and 
critical,  rather  than  constructive;  nor  can  it  be  said  that  he 
brought  much  that  was  at  once  new  and  permanent  to  these 
problems.  They  show  at  its  best  all  his  acumen,  his  para- 
mount common  sense,  and  his  shrinking  from  all  modes  of 
spiritual  exaltation.  They  lack  a  large  and  sympathetic 
grasp  on  general  history;  they  never  rise  to  face  the  great 
underlying  axioms  of  human  thought  and  the  primal  statics 


368  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

of  human  society;  and  they  rather  mock  than  encourage 
what  is  vaguely  described  as  "the  enthusiasm  of  humanity." 
The  whole  field  of  thought  is  far  too  wide  and  subtle  to  be 
touched  upon  here. 

For  similar  reasons,  I  shall  not  attempt  to  do  more  than 
refer  to  the  vast  undertaking  which  absorbed  the  later  years 
of  Stephen's  life  from  1882.  He  planned,  directed,  and 
edited  the  first  twenty-six  volumes  of  the  Dictionary  of 
National  Biography,  for  which  he  compiled  an  immense 
series  of  biographies.  The  world  of  letters,  like  the  world  at 
large,  has  so  completely  recognised  the  admirable  scheme  of 
the  work,  the  unflagging  labour  bestowed  on  it,  and  the  com- 
pleteness of  the  result,  that  not  a  word  more  need  be  said 
here.  Every  year  increases  the  value  of  this  truly  encyclo- 
paedic work,  which  must  remain  a  permanent  landmark  in 
the  history  of  our  literature.  And,  apart  from  all  questions 
of  accuracy  and  literary  skill,  we  cannot  fail  to  recognise  the 
robust  moral  qualities  displayed  in  so  gigantic  an  under- 
taking both  by  Editor  and  by  Publisher,  in  the  courage, 
tenacity,  and  far-sighted  faith  to  which  both  held  fast  under 
growing  difficulties  that  few  of  us  would  care  to  face. 

I  will  say  a  few  words  about  the  last  book  of  all,  which 
was  practically  a  posthumous  issue  of  lectures  that  Stephen 
was  not  strong  enough  to  deliver  in  person,  and  which  have 
not  yet  been  widely  read.  English  Literature  and  Society 
in  the  Eighteenth  Century  was  the  Ford  Lectures  at  Oxford 
in  1903,  and  it  deals  with  his  old  familiar  writers,  with  some 
new  lights  on  their  contemporary  society.  There  is  pathos 
in  the  short  prefatory  letter  to  his  nephew,  Herbert  Fisher,  of 
New  College,  who  read  the  lectures  and  passed  the  proofs. 
He  there  speaks  of  "the  serious  breakdown  in  health,"  which 
prevented  his  journey  to  Oxford.  As  a  fact,  I  visited  him 
whilst  on  a  couch  he  was  writing  the  papers,  struggling  all  the 


SIR    LESLIE    STEPHEN  369 

time  with  a  cruel  and  painful  disease.  The  letter  itself  is 
marked  by  Leslie's  warm-hearted  nature  and  irrepressible 
humour.  It  is  signed  "With  a  warm  sense  of  gratitude,  your 
affectionate  Leslie  Stephen."  And  even  on  his  death-bed 
he  cannot  resist  a  playful  allusion  to  "the  light  in  which 
uncles  are  generally  regarded  by  nephews." 

The  book  itself  contains  almost  nothing  new,  and  very 
little  that  shows  his  old  passion  for  getting  to  the  root  of 
everything  he  touched.  It  was  designed  for  Oxford  students 
dealing  with  a  particular  century,  and  needing  a  practical 
compendium  of  the  whole  epoch.  This  it  gives  them  with 
admirable  clearness  and  neatness  of  form;  and  it  is  exactly 
the  text-book  which  a  student  would  desire  to  have  at  his 
finger-ends.  It  is  the  book  which  a  master  of  the  subject 
who  had  entire  command  of  his  memory  and  his  judgement, 
but  who  was  debarred  from  research  or  reference  to  a  library, 
would  be  able  to  produce  — •  which  could  only  be  produced 
by  one  who  was  master  of  his  facts  and  his  books.  I  came 
upon  an  admirable  sentence,  which  sums  up  Stephen's  own 
literary  judgements:  "The  eighteenth  century,  its  enemies 
used  to  say,  was  the  century  of  coarse  utilitarian  aims,  of 
religious  indifference,  and  political  corruption;  but,  as  I 
prefer  to  say,  was  the  century  of  sound  common  sense  and 
growing  toleration,  and  of  steady  social  and  industrial 
development." 

That  is  Leslie  Stephen's  message  to  our  time :  sound 
sense,  toleration,  social  development.  It  is  a  worthy  and 
great  message.  But,  perhaps,  it  is  not  the  whole  message 
that  we  need.  In  his  own  field  he  was  a.  consummate  guide 
and  a  most  accomplished  critic.  With  all  his  sympathy  for 
Carlyle  and  his  school,  Stephen  did  much  to  correct  that 
violent  prejudice  of  the  Sartorian  master  against  the  eigh- 
teenth century  and  its  notable  work.     With  all  its  short- 


37°  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

comings  and  its  want  of  poetry,  fervour,  and  spiritual  in- 
sight, it  was  the  century  of  common  sense,  of  toleration,  of 
social  and  industrial  development.  All  this,  on  every  side 
of  it,  and  in  all  its  fruits,  Stephen  showed  us  in  an  immense 
series  of  special  studies.  He  did  for  the  eighteenth  century 
almost  as  much  as  Carlyle  did  for  Cromwell  and  for  Goethe. 
It  is  the  age  of  specialism,  and  Stephen  was  essentially  a 
specialist.  He  was  the  apostle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
saturated  with  its  intellectual  clarity  and  its  contempt  of 
fanaticism  and  enthusiasm,  and  sharing  in  its  limitations  and 
its  prosaic  ideals.  In  his  own  field,  Stephen  was  all  that 
we  need  as  an  interpreter,  judge,  and  stimulus.  He  never 
pretended  to  be  an  all-round  critic,  or  a  guide  to  general 
literature,  much  less  to  the  history  of  thought  as  a  whole. 
His  strength  lay  in  his  concentration  on  his  own  field  —  his 
strength,  and,  to  some  extent  also,  his  weakness.  He  very 
rarely  strayed  outside  the  area  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  And  he  almost 
never  strayed  off  the  field  of  English  literature  and  English 
thought.  We  have  learned  nothing  from  him  of  French, 
German,  Italian,  or  Spanish  literature  —  much  less  of  Greek 
and  Roman  poetry.  We  do  not  recall  any  estimate  of 
Dante,  Ariosto,  Boccaccio,  Rabelais,  Corneille,  Moliere, 
Voltaire,  Cervantes,  Calderon,  Goethe,  or  Lessing  —  nor  of 
Homer,  ^Eschylus,  Lucretius,  or  Virgil.  We  do  not  find 
that  he  ever  studied  the  Middle  Ages,  the  development  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  of  the  modern  spiritual  and  religious 
renascence.  Had  he  done  this  he  would  have  given  us  an- 
other series  of  masterly  studies;  but  we  might  have  lost  the 
Leslie  Stephen  whom  we  knew  (whom  the  reading  world 
will  long  continue  to  know  and  to  honour)  —  as  the  standard 
authority  upon  one  of  the  most  fruitful  epochs  of  English 
letters. 


XI 

FRANCIS   W.   NEWMAN 

(1897) 

The  death  in  extreme  old  age  of  Francis  Newman,  the 
oldest  and  most  eminent  of  modern  Theists,  should  not  pass 
unnoticed ;  for  the  manifold  gifts  and  beautiful  character  of 
the  man  must  deeply  interest  us,  however  much  on  philo- 
sophical grounds  there  is  felt  to  be  between  us  a  wide  gulf 
in  opinion.  He  has  suffered  from  that  which  is  often  the 
penalty  of  abnormal  longevity  in  an  age  so  furious  after 
new  things,  so  indifferent  towards  good  work  which  it  im- 
agines to  be  obsolete  to-day.  Those  who  outlive  by  forty 
years  the  zenith  of  their  reputation  pass  away  silently  with- 
out a  word  of  recognition  from  a  new  generation  which  has 
grown  up  under  other  influences. 

The  present  generation  has  little  idea  how  deeply  the  old 
hermit  of  ninety-two,  who  has  been  so  quietly  laid  in  his 
Western  grave,  acted  on  the  inquiring  minds  of  the  middle 
of  his  century.  Not  that  he  ever  founded  a  school  of  thought, 
much  less  ever  put  forth  a  system  of  belief  of  a  positive 
kind  —  but  he  exercised  a  certain  fascination  over  the 
younger  minds  mainly  by  the  fine  traits  of  his  unworldly 
spirit  and  by  the  singular  elasticity  of  his  genius.  Our  space 
would  not  admit  even  a  bare  enumeration  of  his  many  en- 
dowments and  a  mere  catalogue  of  his  books,  addresses, 
verses,  and  homilies.  Perhaps  no  man  of  our  time  ever 
acquired   such   curious   stores  of  disparate   knowledge,   or 

371 


372  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

published  writings  on  such  a  vast  series  of  different  topics. 
The  mere  list  of  these  topics  takes  away  one's  breath.  He 
wrote  on  the  Higher  Mathematics,  on  Philosophy,  Phi- 
lology, Theology,  Morals,  Politics,  Political  Economy,  Latin 
and  Greek  Poetry,  Hebrew,  Arabic,  and  Libyan  Literature, 
on  ^schylus,  on  Aristotle,  on  Homer,  on  Horace,  on  the 
theory  of  translating  the  Classics  —  to  say  nothing  of  reli- 
gious and  political  addresses,  essays  "On  Diet,"  a  Memoir 
of  his  brother,  the  Cardinal,  and  a  Manual  of  Family  De- 
votion. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that,  with  such  multifarious  learn- 
ing, and  such  a  medley  of  keen  interests,  the  work  is  of 
equal  value  throughout.  But  few  of  his  various  pieces  are 
without  that  rarest  of  qualities  —  the  eager  zeal  of  an  acute 
mind  to  teach,  elevate,  and  stimulate  others.  His  courage, 
his  simplicity,  his  enthusiasm,  shone  out  in  all  he  touched  — 
be  it  Scholarship,  Literature,  Politics,  Ethics,  Science,  or 
Religion.  He  never  wrote  a  line  unless  he  had  something 
to  say  which  he  felt  to  be  of  moment  and  real  truth,  and  he 
never  said  anything  which  he  had  not  fully  thought  out 
for  himself.  As  to  himself,  he  was  utterly  fearless,  disin- 
terested, and  frank.  And  for  some  fifty  years  without  a 
break,  in  spite  of  opposition  and  neglect,  he  has  kept  on 
pouring  forth  the  overflowing  of  his  eager  brain  and  his 
passionate  zeal  after  moral  and  intellectual  Reform. 

The  main  work  of  Francis  Newman  has  been  to  take  a 
leading  part  in  the  evolution  of  religious  thought  out  of 
that  superstitious  Bibliotry  in  which  it  was  sunk  in  the  first 
half  of  this  century,  in  freeing  so  many  an  earnest  spirit 
from  the  thraldom  of  a  hide-bound  orthodoxy  of  mechani- 
cal creed  and  ignorant  Pharisaism.  He  made  honest  minds 
acknowledge  how  grossly  the  conventional  Theology  mis- 
understood and  distorted  the  ancient   Scriptures  which  it 


FRANCIS   W.    NEWMAN  373 

professed  to  expound.  And,  although  Newman  did  not 
reach  to  the  level  of  the  best  critical  exposition  of  later  days, 
his  pure  and  fine  feeling,  his  earnest  and  acute  sense  of 
truth,  honesty,  right  and  wrong,  exercised  a  potent  force 
over  thousands  whom  he  did  not  wholly  convince  or  carry 
with  him  to  the  end. 

As  a  reconstructive  power  he  was  evidently  far  less  suc- 
cessful than  as  a  solvent.  He  has  been  for  nearly  fifty 
years  the  acknowledged  chief  in  this  country  of  the  pure 
Theism  of  Theodore  Parker,  Emerson,  and  Kant.  Theism, 
as  a  substantive  scheme  of  religion  by  itself,  has  had  followers 
of  more  philosophic  and  literary  power  than  Newman;  but 
it  has  had  in  our  country  no  apostle  of  such  long  experience, 
consistency,  and  enthusiasm.  Francis  Newman  preached 
the  Theistic  Church  with  all  the  conviction,  the  fervour, 
and  all  the  devotion  of  self  that  his  brother,  the  Cardinal, 
gave' to  the  Church  Catholic.  The  Church  Theistic  acknow- 
ledges no  Hierarchy,  and  perhaps  disdains  it.  But  if  there 
were  a  Sacred  College  of  those  who  worship  God  only, 
recognising  but  one  Divine  being,  and  who  discard  both 
Scripture  and  Creed,  the  name  of  Francis  Newman  might 
hold  in  it  a  higher  place  than  that  of  the  Cardinal  himself. 

It  is  difficult  to  think  of  the  one  Newman  without  the 
other,  with  all  their  startling  points  of  contrast  and  of  union. 
Both  begin  life  in  the  same  family  influences  and  teaching; 
both  are  men  of  fervent  religious  feeling;  both  are  bold, 
disinterested,  eloquent,  indefatigable,  with  the  temper  of 
the  apostle  and  the  martyr.  Both  lead  new  movements  in 
religion,  forsaking  their  Church,  their  obvious  careers,  their 
associates,  and  their  early  hopes.  The  one  passes  through 
agonies  of  doubt  into  the  severest  form  of  Catholic  Ortho- 
doxy, of  which  he  becomes  the  staunch  exponent  and  the 
eminent  Prince.     The  other  surrenders  first  the  Christian 


374  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

ministry,  and  then  the  Christian  communion  for  conscience' 
sake :  he  lives  and  dies  under  the  ban  of  current  orthodoxy ; 
and  retires  into  an  obscure  old  age  of  labour  and  counsel, 
lit  up  only  with  the  love  and  honour  of  distant  friends  and  a 
few  scattered  communities  of  thoughtful  men  and  women 
who  can  hardly  be  called  a  Church.  The  elder  brother 
mounts  on  the  top  of  the  wave  of  Catholic  reaction,  and 
becomes  a  foremost  pillar  of  a  vast  religious  organisation. 
The  younger  brother  leads  a  far-reaching  movement  of 
thought  which  is  destined  in  one  form  or  other  to  under- 
mine the  very  foundations  of  that  Church;  he  ends  in 
obscurity  and  with  hardly  any  personal  following  or  influ- 
ence. Yet  the  Cardinal  represents  only  a  discredited  Past, 
and  Francis  did  something  to  bring  us  nearer  to  a  Greater 
Future. 

In  mental  activity  —  undoubtedly  in  mental  versatility 
and  culture  —  Francis  very  much  surpassed  the  Cardinal. 
There  can  be  no  question  that,  in  learning  and  variety  of 
gift,  the  two  cannot  be  placed  on  the  same  level.  The  cen- 
tral ideas  of  the  Cardinal's  philosophy  are  to  us  so  wild  and 
incongruous  that  we  can  only  account  for  them  as  intellec- 
tual "faults"  (in  the  geologic  sense)  —  abysmal  fractures 
produced  by  a  truly  "seismic"  act  of  the  will.  The  phi- 
losophy of  Francis  (little  as  we  share  it)  is  that  of  a  logical 
and  acute  mind.  In  poetical,  literary,  and  polemical  gifts, 
the  Cardinal  had  a  great  superiority.  He  was  a  master  of 
a  style  that  had  hardly  any  equal  in  his  time.  He  was  a 
brilliant  controversialist,  a  subtle  fencer,  a  splendid  rhetori- 
cian, and  a  most  enthralling  preacher.  By  these  popular 
gifts  he  has  blinded  the  opinion  of  his  contemporaries  to  his 
extravagant  hallucinations  and  passionate  defiance  of  com- 
mon sense  and  coherent  thought.  In  coherent  thought  — 
the  very  foundation  of  an  intellectual  leader  —  Francis  New- 


FRANCIS    W.    NEWMAN  375 

man  was  much  superior  to  his  brother.  Yet  our  distrust  of 
Catholic  sophistry  need  not  induce  us  to  deny  that  the 
Cardinal  lived  and  died  a  powerful  religious  force  in  his 
age;  and  that  the  apostle  of  Theism,  having  done  much 
to  start  an  important,  but  evanescent  phase  of  thought,  lived 
to  see  his  early  work  almost  forgotten,  and  left  at  his  death 
little  enough  which  is  likely  to  come  to  fruit  in  the  future. 

But  the  inferiority  of  Francis  Newman  to  the  Cardinal 
as  an  influence  over  his  generation,  is  not  to  be  accounted 
for  solely  by  the  great  superiority  of  his  brother  as  rhetorician 
and  writer.  That  is  but  half  the  truth.  There  was  a  moral 
superiority  also  in  the  Cardinal  —  a  force  of  character,  an 
organic  quality  of  brain.  He  had  the  synthetic  genius  in  a 
high  sense;  whilst  Francis,  with  all  his  really  great  analytic 
powers,  had  no  synthetic  genius  at  all.  His  learning  and 
his  enthusiasm,  breaking  forth  in  fifty  sides  at  once,  ended 
in  becoming  dispersive  and  dissolvent,  for  want  of  a  social 
and  philosophic  centre  to  give  it  organic  unity  and  concen- 
tration of  active  purpose.  The  Positivist  tendency  is  all 
against  a  narrow  specialism:  its  whole  scheme  of  education 
and  culture  is  for  a  truly  encyclopaedic  combination  of  solid 
knowledge.  But  then  a  variety  of  special  studies,  without 
an  adequate  synthesis,  necessarily  ends  in  dispersion;  and 
dispersion  means  unprofitable  erudition  and  wraste  of  effort. 
A  true  synthesis  —  that  is,  a  dominant  social  and  intellectual 
philosophy,  or  in  other  words  a  systematic  religion  —  is  an 
indispensable  condition  for  giving  to  a  multiplicity  of  ac- 
quirements either  permanent  or  efficient  results. 

Had  not  Francis  Newman  a  religion  of  his  own  ?  —  it  will 
be  said.  A  religious  idea  —  a  grand  and  spiritual  ideal  of 
his  own  —  he  had.  A  systematic  and  organic  social  reli- 
gion he  had  not.  This  is  not  the  place  to  argue  again  the 
whole  theory  and  practice  of  wrhat  is  called  "pure  Theism." 


376  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

To  put  it  shortly,  pure  Theism  means  pure  Self.  It  may 
be,  if  the  believer  is  a  pure  and  lofty  spirit  like  Francis  New- 
man, it  may  be  an  elevating  ideal.  But  each  mind  makes 
the  ideal  for  itself,  and  must  make  it  differently,  and  colour 
it  by  his  own  nature  and  mind.  Pure  Theism,  without 
Church,  or  history,  or  organisation,  or  Scripture,  or  accepted 
body  of  scientific  belief  and  moral  practice,  can  only  mean 
for  each  of  us:  "What  I  think,  what  I  admire."  And  the 
end  of  it  is  dispersion,  change  of  front,  vagueness,  and  pure 
Individualism. 

A  Church,  a  Scripture,  a  Creed,  a  religious  organisation 
—  these  mean  a  solid  accumulation  of  human  knowledge 
and  thought,  a  common  practice,  a  standard  and  criterion 
of  conduct  and  belief.  And  all  these,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  practical  progress,  are  a  more  solid  foundation  than 
are  personal  hypotheses,  however  beautiful  may  be  the  hy- 
potheses, and  however  imperfect  may  be  the  creed  or  the 
Church.  The  Churches  —  whether  they  be  based  on  the 
Law  of  Moses,  or  the  Rock  of  Peter,  or  the  Bible,  or  the 
Koran,  or  the  Confucian  Sacred  Books,  and  however  faulty 
each  and  all  may  be,  the  great  organic  Churches  are,  in  a 
rude  form,  an  adumbration  of  Humanity;  and,  in  a  very 
broken  way,  they  are  based  on  part  of  the  great  religious 
and  intellectual  stores  of  mankind.  Pure  Theism,  whilst 
retaining  as  the  one  article  of  its  attenuated  creed  the 
metaphysical  hypothesis  in  its  most  transcendental,  and 
therefore  its  least  scientific  and  least  human  form,  cuts 
itself  adrift  from  historic  filiation,  from  the  accumulated 
experience  and  teaching  of  our  spiritual  forefathers,  and 
leaves  each  believer  free  to  imagine  for  himself  the 
nature  of  his  God  and  the  law  of  the  Divine  Will. 
A  noble  spirit,  like  that  of  Francis  Newman,  has  a 
noble  image  of  that  Divine  Will.     An  ignoble  spirit  fashions 


FRANCIS    W.    NEWMAN  377 

it  after  his  own  temper  and  his  own  lights.     That  is  the 
danger  of  pure  Theism. 

The  Religion  of  Humanity  falls  into  line  with  the  organic 
religions,  having  a  great  tradition,  a  systematic  philosophy, 
and  a  working  scheme  of  education  and  of  conduct.  It 
absorbs  all  that  is  true  and  social  in  the  Catholic  and  other 
earlier  systems ;  its  creed  is  the  established  axioms  of  physi- 
cal, moral,  and  social  science;  its  cult  is  the  education  of 
the  soul  in  all  humane  and  demonstrable  truths.  Whilst 
recognising  in  pure  Theism  a  refined  and  transitory  aspect 
of  the  metaphysical  stage,  it  watches  with  keen  sympathy 
and  reverent  honour  the  passing  away  of  one  who,  by  a 
clear  brain  and  fine  nature,  did  much  to  free  an  earlier 
generation  than  our  own  from  a  worldly  ecclesiasticism  and 
the  ignorant  idolatry  of  a  Book  which  had  grown  to  be  as 
much  a  hindrance  as  a  help  to  spiritual  life. 


XII 

CANON   LIDDON 

(1890) 

Though  I  can  in  no  sense  presume  to  call  myself  one  of 
Canon  Liddon's  friends,  it  is  quite  true  that  I  was  his  school- 
fellow more  than  forty  years  ago.  I  was  at  Oxford  with 
him,  too;  and,  widely  as  our  lines  have  led  us  apart  since 
then,  I  have  found  from  time  to  time  an  affectionate  wel- 
come from  him;  and,  on  my  side,  have  never  lost  the  im- 
pression left  on  my  mind  by  his  saintly  youth  and  sweet 
graciousness  of  manner,  even  to  those  with  whom  he  had 
least  in  common.  As  I  am  asked  to  do  so,  I  will  put  down 
what  I  can  remember  of  his  early  years,  leaving  entirely  to 
others  to  speak  of  him  as  a  man  and  as  a  priest.  Yes,  I  sat 
beside  Liddon  more  than  forty  years  ago,  in  the  Sixth  at 
King's  College  School,  for  a  year  or  two  —  about  1846-47. 
He  was  three  years  my  senior:  and  the  gulf  that  exists 
between  fourteen  and  seventeen  amongst  schoolfellows  is 
one  not  easily  passed.  But  I  sat  in  form  next  to  him;  and, 
as  in  the  Sixth  we  did  not  change  places,  I  was  his  daily 
companion. 

I  was  fond  of  all  sorts  of  games:  he  of  none.  I  read  all 
sorts  of  books :  he  had  even  then  his  own  fixed  line  of  thought 
and  of  study.  He  was  much  my  senior,  and  very  old  of  his 
years,  so  there  was  no  kind  of  school  intimacy  between  us. 
He  always  seemed  to  me  an  elder  brother,  who  wished  the 
young  ones  were  more  serious.     But,  different  though  our 

378 


CANON    LIDDON  379 

interests  and  habits  were,  I  always  found  him  friendly, 
gentle,  and  considerate.  What  was  Canon  Liddon  like  as  a 
boy  of  seventeen?  Well,  so  far  as  I  can  remember,  he  was 
at  seventeen  just  what  he  was  at  twenty-seven,  or  thirty- 
seven,  or  forty-seven  —  sweet,  grave,  thoughtful,  complete. 
Others  perhaps  may  recall  growth,  change,  completeness, 
gradually  coming  on  him  in  look,  form,  mind,  and  character. 
I  cannot.  To  me,  when  I  heard  him  preaching  in  St.  Paul's, 
or  heard  him  speak  at  Oxford  of  more  recent  years,  he  was 
just  the  same  earnest,  zealous,  affectionate,  and  entirely 
other-world  nature  that  I  remember  him  at  seventeen.  The 
lines  in  his  face  may  have  deepened;  the  look  may  have 
become  more  anxious  of  late  years.  But,  as  a  schoolboy, 
I  always  thought  he  looked  just  what  he  did  as  a  priest. 
There  was  the  same  expression  of  sweet,  somewhat  fatherly, 
somewhat  melancholy  interest. 

He  would  reprove,  exhort,  advise  boys  as  a  young  priest 
does  in  his  own  congregation.  We  expected  it  of  him; 
and  it  never  seemed  to  us  to  be  in  any  way  stepping  out  of 
his  own  business  when  he  gave  one  of  us  a  lecture  or  a  sharp 
rebuke.  We  seemed  to  feel  that  this  was  what  he  was  there 
for.  He  was  entirely  a  priest  amongst  boys.  I  do  not 
think  he  ever  joined  in  any  game  or  even  looked  on  at  a 
game ;  I  am  sure  he  never  took  part  in  the  rough-and-tumble 
and  horse-play  common  amongst  boys ;  and  I  am  certain  he 
never  returned  a  blow  or  a  practical  joke  at  his  expense. 
Nor  had  he  any  occasion  to  do  so;  for  neither  blow  nor 
horse-play  was  ever  practised  upon  Liddon.  There  was,  I 
fancy,  a  kind  of  silent  understanding  that  to  treat  Liddon 
rudely,  even  without  intending  it,  would  be  unmanly,  like 
striking  a  priest  with  his  robes  on.  I  distinctly  remember 
the  howl  of  indignation  which  rose  when  a  boy,  mistaking 
him  for  another,  once  roughly  struck  him  from  behind  in 


380  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

a  rude  jest.  When  he  turned  with  a  look  of  sorrowful  ex- 
postulation, without  a  sharp  word,  we  felt  somewhat  ashamed 
of  our  companion;  who,  I  think,  was  carried  off  and  judi- 
cially pommelled.  I  lived  with  my  own  family,  and  he 
lived  in  a  boarding-house;  so  I  cannot  say  much  about  his 
life  out  of  school  hours.  But  I  remember  a  legend  that,  on 
the  occasion  of  some  violent  outbreak  in  his  house,  a  sort  of 
barring  out  or  breaking  out  which  had  been  planned  with- 
out his  knowledge,  Liddon  interposed  with  his  personal  in- 
fluence ;  and  by  remonstrance  and  advice  induced  the  house 
to  surrender  or  give  up  the  plot,  before  much  harm  was 
done. 

His  school  work  was  always  well  done  and  adequate; 
but  I  do  not  remember  that  he  won  prizes  or  cared  to  win 
any.  His  interests  even  then  were  entirely  with  theology, 
the  new  Church  movement,  and  the  preachers  and  teachers 
of  the  day.  At  seventeen,  Liddon  was  just  as  deeply  ab- 
sorbed in  Dr.  Pusey  and  his  work  as  he  was  at  twenty-seven. 
It  will  be  remembered  that  this  was  just  the  moment  of 
the  great  Tractarian  agitation.  King's  College  School  was 
essentially  a  school  for  Churchmen.  We  were  all  greatly 
excited  by  the  religious  questions  of  the  day;  and  most  of 
us  were  decided  High  Churchmen,  as  I  was  myself,  to  the 
extent  of  giving  serious  anxiety  to  our  parents.  But  I  can 
distinctly  remember  that,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  Liddon 
had  Church  opinions,  as  definitely  formed  and  on  much 
the  same  lines,  as  he  had  at  twenty-seven  or  thirty-seven. 
And  his  serious  studies  were  as  much  given  to  theology,  and 
his  chief  intimacies  were  as  entirely  formed  on  an  ecclesias- 
tical basis,  as  ever  they  were  in  later  life.  In  the  whole 
course  of  my  life,  I  have  never  known  any  one  who  ap- 
peared to  me,  over  a  period  of  more  than  forty  years,  so 
entirely  the  same  from  first  to  last:  — the  same  in  look,  in 


CANON   LEDDON  381 

manner,  in  mind,  in  nature.  And  in  frankness  I  must  add, 
that  I  have  often  wondered  how  one,  who,  as  it  seemed  to 
me,  had  so  little  of  elasticity,  of  breadth,  and  of  growth, 
should  have  ever  commanded  so  great  an  influence. 

I  knew  him  at  Oxford,  and  he  was  always  to  me  the 
same  sweet,  sympathetic,  somewhat  melancholy  senior.  He 
was  taking  his  degree  when  I  went  into  residence.  By  that 
time  my  High  Church  opinions  had  ceased  to  give  anxiety 
to  my  friends,  and  I  was  slowly  forming  very  different  ideas 
of  life,  of  man,  of  the  world,  and  of  religion.  So  that  Liddon 
and  I  never  discussed  the  things  most  dear  to  each  of  us, 
when  we  chanced  to  meet.  When  this  happened,  he  was  as 
sweet  and  as  sadly  affectionate  as  ever.  And,  though  I 
followed  his  career  with  interest,  admiration,  and,  I  confess, 
not  a  little  wonder,  I  thought  it  hopeless  to  try  to  get  him 
to  look  at  my  point  of  view  with  interest,  or  even  with  pa- 
tience; though  he  would  always  look  at  the  holder  of  it 
with  kindly  goodwill.  Long  before  we  had  reached  that 
period,  I  had  come  to  feel  that  unless  our  philosophy  and 
our  science  are  right  and  clear,  everything  else  will  be  wrong. 
But  this  was  a  position  that  we  both  felt  it  useless  to 
discuss. 

We  met  from  time  to  time;  I  never  failed  to  admire  his 
personal  courteousness,  friendly  remembrance  of  old  days, 
and  sweetness  of  manner,  even  in  the  case  of  the  deepest 
antagonism  of  thought.  I  used  to  meet  him  during  the  trial 
of  Essays  and  Reviews,  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine 
greater  antagonism  of  view  than  his  and  mine  upon  that 
subject.  And  meeting  him  in  a  first  interview  with  a  Jingo 
newspaper  editor  during  the  height  of  the  controversy  about 
Turks,  Bulgarians,  and  Servians,  I  could  not  fail  to  admire, 
as  we  all  did,  his  gentleness,  courtesy,  and  entire  command 
of   himself.     I    abstain   from   saying   one   word    about   his 


382  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

opinions,  as  to  which  of  course  I  have  my  own.  I  have 
taken  up  my  pen  only  to  utter  a  word  of  sorrow  and  of 
respect  for  the  loss  of  one  whom  forty  years  ago  I  knew  as 
a  schoolboy,  and  who  impressed  all,  even  then,  as  a  sweet 
and  spiritual  nature. 


XIII 

SIR   CHARLES   COOKSON 

(1906) 

On  the  3rd  of  February  died  one  of  the  original  authors  of 
International  Policy,  who  was,  in  his  earlier  years,  asso- 
ciated with  the  older  body  of  Positivists.  The  Times  of 
5th  February  contained  a  full  account  of  the  long  official 
career  of  Sir  Charles  Alfred  Cookson,  K.C.M.G.,  and  C.B., 
who  graduated  in  honours  at  Oxford  in  1855,  as  an  Exhibi- 
tioner of  Oriel  College,  and,  after  serving  in  the  War  Office, 
was  appointed,  in  1868,  the  Vice-Consul  and  Judge  of  the 
Consular  Court  at  Constantinople.  He  served  as  Special 
Commissioner  at  Athens  in  1870,  and  at  Cyprus  in  1878, 
and  was  Consul  and  Judge  in  Egypt  from  1874  to  1897. 
Both  in  Egypt  and  after  his  retirement  in  England,  he  took 
an  active  part  in  organising  many  charitable  and  public 
institutions  —  the  Victoria  Home  for  Nurses,  the  Sailors' 
and  Soldiers'  Institute,  the  Public  Library  and  the  Sanitary 
Board  in  Alexandria,  and  in  London  —  the  Hospital  for 
Children,  the  Charity  Organisation  Society,  and  the  Smoke 
Abatement  Society.  On  his  retirement,  after  thirty  years 
of  public  services,  both  in  a  diplomatic  and  a  judicial  capac- 
ity, he  was  knighted  by  Lord  Salisbury.  He  died  at  his 
house  in  Chelsea  in  his  seventy-sixth  year. 

To  the  writer  the  memory  of  Charles  Cookson  will  ever 
be  dear,  as  the  oldest  of  his  friends,  dating  from  his  school 
fellowship  at  King's  College  in  1846,  and  for  his  high  moral 

383 


384  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

and  intellectual  influence  continued  unabated  for  sixty  years. 
Older  than  myself  by  a  year  or  two,  he  led  me  in  my  boyish 
days  to  care  for  poetry,  philosophy,  and  religion.  With 
Henry  Parry  Liddon,  the  late  Canon  of  St.  Paul's,  we  were 
all  very  High  Churchmen,  and  Cookson  was  what  in  those 
days  was  called  a  Puseyite.  Together  we  attended  St. 
Margaret's,  Wells  Street,  high  ritualist  services,  until  my 
parents  feared  I  was  being  led  to  Rome.  In  poetry  Cook- 
son  led  the  way  in  devotion  to  Shakespeare,  which  I  en- 
joyed as  a  dramatist,  whilst  he  insisted  on  his  supreme 
greatness  as  a  poet.  His  own  passion  was  for  Wordsworth, 
with  whom  he  had  a  family  connection,  and  whose  poems 
he  knew  from  end  to  end.  Like  many  a  boy  of  fourteen, 
my  own  taste  was  rather  for  Pope  and  Byron.  Many  a 
literary  battle  did  we  have  in  time  that  ought  to  have  been 
given  to  Thucydides  and  Cicero  over  the  poetic  value  of  the 
Excursion  or  the  Dunciad.  He  and  I  went  up  together  to 
Oxford  and  took  our  degree  about  the  same  time.  During 
his  official  life  abroad,  we  kept  up  active  correspondence 
and  met  in  his  long  vacations  in  Europe,  and  I  visited  him 
in  Alexandria,  whilst  he  was  still  busy  with  his  consular  and 
judicial  work. 

The  feature  in  his  history  which  specially  concerns  me 
here  is  that  Charles  Cookson  was  the  first  to  introduce  to 
us  in  our  undergraduate  days  at  Oxford  the  knowledge  of 
Auguste  Comte.  It  was  in  the  year  1851  that  he  brought 
me  the  work  on  Positivism  by  Littre\  and  urged  me  to 
master  it,  and  also  the  estimate  of  Comte's  philosophy  in 
Mill's  Logic.  In  185 1,  of  course,  Comte's  religious  scheme 
was  not  framed,  and  the  Politique  was  not  written.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  Cookson  was  the  earliest  Oxford  under- 
graduate to  make  a  serious  study  of  Comte.  I  am  not  pre- 
pared to  say  that  he  ever  accepted  Comte's  later  system, 


SIR   CHARLES   COOKSON  385 

though  he  continued  to  read  and  consider  the  whole  of  his 
philosophical  writings.  Nor  do  I  think  that  Cookson  ever 
abandoned  the  essential  principles  of  the  faith  in  which  he 
had  been  trained  from  boyhood,  and  in  which  as  a  young 
man  he  had  been  an  ardent  believer.  But  his  philosophical 
power  and  his  immense  reading  prevented  him  in  manhood 
from  following  the  steps  of  our  older  schoolfellow,  H.  P. 
Liddon,  who  soon,  at  Christ  Church,  became  Dr.  Pusey's 
most  prominent  lieutenant. 

When  seven  of  us,  with  Dr.  Richard  Congreve  as  leader 
and  editor,  undertook  to  write  a  collective  volume  of  Essays 
in  order  to  treat  International  Relations  on  a  systematic 
basis  of  morality  and  the  supreme  interests  of  Humanity  as 
a  whole,  I  induced  Cookson  to  write  on  British  relations 
with  Japan.  Dr.  Bridges  treated  "China,"  Professor  Beesly 
took  "The  Sea,"  E.  H.  Pember  treated  "India,"  and  I  took 
"France."  Cookson  gave  a  great  deal  of  study  to  the  then 
unknown  history  and  character  of  Japan,  and  produced 
an  essay  of  much  interest  and  useful  learning.  When  the 
volume  was  reissued  many  years  after  in  a  new  edition, 
Cookson  considered  that  his  position  as  Consul,  involving 
diplomatic  as  well  as  judicial  duties  of  a  very  critical  inter- 
national kind,  precluded  him  from  taking  part  in  a  work 
which  certainly  took  very  decided  sides  in  many  keenly 
contested  political  problems,  and  usually  opposed  all  exist- 
ing official  forms  of  policy.  The  omission  of  his  essay  on 
Japan  was  of  the  less  importance,  inasmuch  as  in  the  inter- 
vening years  the  whole  situation  and  character  of  Japan 
had  been  so  completely  transformed.  Charles  Cookson  will 
long  be  remembered  by  all  who  came  in  contact  with  him 
as  a  conscientious  public  servant,  an  indefatigable  student, 
as  a  high-minded  citizen,  and  an  affectionate  friend. 


XIV 

SIR    JAMES   KNOWLES 

{From  "  The  Nineteenth  Century"  1908) 

The  circle  of  Sir  James  Knowles'  friends  was  so  singularly 
wide,  and  the  esteem  and  affection  with  which  in  a  long 
and  active  life  he  was  held  by  his  intimates  have  been  so 
fully  described  by  others,  that  I  will  confine  my  remarks 
in  the  few  pages  that  his  successor  kindly  offers  me  to  the 
story  of  his  brilliant  success  as  secretary  and  founder  of  the 
Metaphysical  Society,  and  again  as  founder  and  Editor  of 
the  Nineteenth  Century. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  cherished  memories  of  my  literary 
life  that  I  can  look  back  to  my  own  fellowship  with  that 
remarkable  Society  from  the  first,  and  also  that  for  thirty- 
three  years,  from  1875  downwards,  I  can  recall  the  kind 
and  continuous  consideration  I  enjoyed  from  James  Knowles, 
as  Editor  first  of  the  Contemporary  Review,  and  then  as 
Editor  and  proprietor  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

My  whole  literary  career  for  all  that  period  has  been 
closely  bound  up  with  these  two  organs  of  thought,  and  a 
large  part  of  my  own  published  works  consists  of  studies 
that  wholly  or  in  part  first  came  before  the  public  as  con- 
tributions to  the  periodicals  which  were  directed  by  James 
Knowles.  In  some  sense  he  has  been  in  literature  my 
sponsor,  however  much  he  often  differed  from  my  utterances, 
which  he  not  seldom  called  in  others  to  combat  or  qualify. 
And  it  is  a  melancholy  satisfaction  to  me,  at  the  request 

386 


SIR    JAMES    KNOWLES  387 

of  those  he  leaves  to  sorrow  for  him,  that  I  seem  called  on 
to  speak  a  few  last  words  over  his  open  tomb. 

It  is  sober  truth  that  during  the  twelve  years  of  its  activ- 
ity, from  1S69  onwards  through  the  'seventies,  the  Metaphysi- 
cal Society  exercised  a  definite  influence  on  the  development 
of  philosophical  and  religious  thought,  the  indirect  conse- 
quences of  which  are  still  to  be  traced.  The  idea,  which 
Knowles  and  Tennyson  started  in  1868,  was  to  bring  face 
to  face  competent  exponents  of  diverse  theological  and  meta- 
physical schools  in  a  friendly  symposium,  where  the  crucial 
axioms  of  their  respective  systems  of  creed  and  doctrine 
could  be  tested  with  the  freedom  of  a  scientific  society.  As 
the  Royal  Society  opened  an  arena  where  new  inventions 
and  physical  discoveries  could  be  examined  and  analysed 
by  past-masters  in  the  natural  sciences,  so  it  was  proposed 
to  test  and  argue  the  validity  of  the  new  ideas  which  lie  inter 
apices  of  moral  and  metaphysical  science.  The  ultimate 
canons  of  Metaphysics  are  practically  the  data  of  Theology ; 
and  indeed  it  was  at  first  designed  to  found  a  Theological 
Society.  Froude  declared  that  it  would  be  marvellous  if 
the  new  Society  hung  together  for  a  year.  But  the  Lau- 
reate more  happily  reminded  him  that  modern  science  had 
taught  us  "how  to  separate  light  from  heat."  The  Laureate 
was  the  better  prophet.  Some  brilliant  flashes  of  light  were 
evolved  with  a  minimum  of  heat,  even  when  Cardinal  Man- 
ning and  Father  Dalgairns  came  to  hand -grip  with  Huxley 
and  W.  K.  Clifford,  when  Ruskin  or  Abbot  Gasquet  met  the 
two  Stephens. 

An  excellent  account  of  the  Society  was  written  by  Knowles 
and  R.  Ff.  Ffutton,  editor  of  the  Spectator,  and  appeared  in 
the  Review  in  August  1885.  The  list  of  the  members  there 
given  includes  the  names  of  Tennyson,  Gladstone,  Dean 
Stanley,    Cardinal     Manning,    Huxley,     Tyndall,    Ruskin, 


388  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Froude,  Maurice,  Martineau,  Seeley,  Bagehot,  John  Morley, 
Clifford,  Frederick  Pollock,  Mark  Pattison,  John  Lubbock, 
and  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour.     And  the  catalogue  of  the  papers 
read  and  discussed  ranges  from  the  theory  of  Causation,  of 
a   Soul,   of   God,    Death,   Immortality,    Miracle,   the   Will, 
Matter,  Force,  the  Absolute,  the  canons  of  Proof,  Things- 
in-themselves,   and  Intuitive  faculties.     To  put  it  shortly, 
most  of  the  best-known  thinkers  and  controversialists  of  the 
'seventies  were  represented,  from  ultra-montane  Catholicism 
to  materialist  Monism.     And  all  the  primary  ideas  of  philos- 
ophy and  theology  were  more  than  once  argued  and  tested. 
The  papers  read   at  the   Society,   together  with  critical 
debates  in  reply,  frequently  appeared  in  the  Contemporary 
Review,  of  which  Knowles  was  editor,  and  then  in  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  Review,  which  he  founded  in  1877  and  edited 
down  to  his  death.     For  a  short  time  indeed  this  Review 
was  almost  the  literary  organ  of  the  Metaphysical  Society; 
and  of  the  sixty-two  members  of  the  Society  there  were  few 
who,  at  one  time  or  other,  have  not  appeared  as  contributors 
to  the  pages  of  the  Review.     The  rule  of  signed  articles, 
by  writers  specially  competent  to  treat  the  particular  sub- 
ject, has  been  uniformly  followed.     And  every  side  of  every 
question  has  been  admitted,  with  the  guarantees  of  personal 
responsibility  of  a  known  writer  and  adequate  knowledge  to 
treat  the  matter  with  fairness.     One  very  interesting  form 
of  discussion  was,  I  think,  started  by  Mr.  Knowles,  unless 
my  memory  betrays  me  on  a  suggestion  of  my  own  —  viz. 
a  Symposium,  i.e.  a  succession  of  short   papers  by  various 
writers   from   different   standpoints   criticising   the   opening 
paper  and  those  which  followed  it.     This  original  form  of 
magazine -writing  had  for  a  time  a  deserved  success. 

With  the  dissolution  of  the  Metaphysical  Society  in  1880, 
it  ceased  to  furnish  material  for  the  Review,  which  for  twenty- 


SIR   JAMES    KNOWLES  389 

eight  years  has  kept  up  the  variety  of  its  topics  and  the  wide 
range  of  writers  which  were  the  distinguishing  marks  at  its 
founding.  It  grew  to  be  a  literary  power  in  the  New  World 
as  well  as  in  the  Old;  and  has  exercised  a  very  striking 
influence  not  only  on  periodical  literature  but  on  liberal 
thought. 

In  a  few  pages  it  is  impossible  to  relate  the  story  of  a 
career  of  editorship  of  more  than  thirty  years,  with  its  multi- 
plicity of  interests,  causes,  and  topics,  and  its  singular  list  of 
eminent  contributors.  None  know  so  well  as  his  earliest 
colleagues  in  this  task  how  entirely  the  result  was  the  work 
of  the  energy,  the  boldness,  the  versatile  tact,  and  the  genial 
sympathy  of  the  English  Brunetiere,  Sir  James  Knowles. 


XV 

HERBERT   SPENCER 
(1904) 

By  the  unanimous  voice  of  English  as  well  as  foreign  thought, 
Herbert  Spencer  was  the  most  prominent  English  philoso- 
pher of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is,  indeed,  welcome  to 
those  who  profoundly  honoured  his  life  and  his  genius,  and 
who  have  never  spared  their  hearty  appreciation  of  his 
character  and  his  achievements,  to  witness  the  general  and 
spontaneous  agreement  with  this  judgement.  It  is  a  striking 
testimony  to  the  power  over  men  still  exercised  by  a  noble 
life  of  devotion  to  social  duty,  as  it  witnesses  also  to  the 
ascendancy  of  an  original  and  real  philosopher  in  a  world 
so  saturated  with  every  form  of  specialism.  We  who  have 
never  hesitated  to  express  our  sympathy  and  admiration  for 
his  work  in  the  many  sides  of  it  wherein  we  could  join  him 
with  heart  and  soul,  as  also  our  divergence  in  those  where 
we  could  not  follow  him,  are  free  to  speak  without  hyperbolic 
encomium  or  guarded  qualification  as  we  note  the  close  of  a 
great  career. 

The  story  of  his  life  has  been  one  of  almost  unparalleled 
devotion  to  his  vast  task.  The  annals  of  British  philosophy 
can  hardly  present  a  similar  instance  of  laborious  persever- 
ance in  a  sphere  where  no  profit  and  very  scanty  honour  is 
to  be  won,  under  external  difficulties  so  great,  and,  for  the 
whole  of  his  early  life,  in  the  face  of  discouragement  and 
neglect  so  oppressive.     Herbert  Spencer  often  published  his 

390 


HERBERT    SPENCER  39I 

reasons  "for  dissenting  from  the  philosophy  of  M.  Comte." 
But  he  did  not  dissent  from  Comte's  ideal  of  a  great  life: 
"une  pensee  de  jeunesse  executee  dans  Pdge  m^r."  The 
philosophic  detachment  from  all  the  things  that  ordinary 
men  love  and  pursue  was  entirely  the  same  in  the  English 
and  in  the  French  philosopher.  Neither  fortune,  nor  ease, 
nor  weak  health,  nor  society,  nor  fame,  nor  family,  nor 
friends  were  ever  able  to  withdraw  Herbert  Spencer  from 
the  fulfilment  of  his  great  and  complicated  task.  His  reward 
has  been  that  he,  almost  alone  of  modern  philosophers,  has 
achieved  all  that  he  purposed,  and  perhaps  all  which  he  was 
capable  of  completing. 

In  other  writings  I  have  dealt  with  the  Synthetic  Philos- 
ophy of  Spencer  in  a  more  detailed  and  specific  way.  It  is 
sufficient  for  the  moment  to  call  attention  to  the  character- 
istic feature  of  it,  a  feature  which  all  judges  alike  have  noted, 
and  which  all  have  praised.  Spencer  stands  out  amongst  all 
English  philosophers  since  Bacon,  in  that  he  deliberately 
set  himself  to  frame  a  Synthesis  of  knowledge,  that  is,  a 
system  whereby  a  real  concatenation  of  all  our  scientific  and 
moral  ideas  could  be  harmonised.  To  Spencer  Synthesis 
always  meant  an  organisation  of  the  sciences,  the  binding 
up  of  all  special  learning  into  an  organic  unity  —  vitalised 
in  every  nerve  and  pore  of  the  encyclopaedic  mass  by  creative 
and  omnipresent  ideas,  themselves  inspired  and  ruled  by 
one  supreme  conception.  In  this,  Spencer  stood  alone  with 
Comte.  The  Synthetic  philosophy  is  (in  Britain)  unique. 
No  British  philosopher  but  Bacon  has  conceived  anything 
of  the  kind.  Preposterously  unlike  Bacon  as  Spencer  was 
in  character,  in  life,  and  in  brain  (he  was  even  in  violent 
contrast  with  Bacon),  his  critics  at  home  and  abroad  are 
continually  comparing  him  with  Bacon  by  reason  of  the 
encyclopaedic  nature  of  their  studies  and  ideals.     In  this 


392  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

they  are  right.     Spencer  is  our  one  synthetic  philosopher 
of  the  last  century. 

He  certainly  exaggerated  Synthesis  and  overrated  the  po- 
tential range  of  any  Synthesis.  The  synthesis  of  Comte  is 
devoted  to  teach  the  impossibility  of  any  Objective  Synthesis 
of  the  Universe,  and  the  necessity  of  limiting  philosophy  to 
a  Subjective  (i.e.  an  anthropocentric  and  geocentric)  Synthesis 
of  what  Man  can  know  and  can  do.  But  we  can  do  full 
justice  to  the  magnificent  dream  of  a  great  thinker  to  con- 
struct a  coherent  Synthesis,  or  system  of  scientific  and  socio- 
logic  knowledge,  and  to  the  heroic  courage  with  which  Herbert 
Spencer  sacrificed  every  earthly  enjoyment  and  reward  in 
the  long  struggle  to  complete  his  ideal.  To  see  the  whole 
literary  and  scientific  world  of  Europe  and  America  do 
homage  to  this  devotion  to  Synthetic  Philosophy  gives  new 
hope  to  those  who  feel  all  the  barrenness  and  chaos  involved 
in  the  endless  wanderings  of  analytic  specialism. 


XVI 

HERBERT  SPENCER'S   "LIFE"1 

(1908) 

It  seems  generally  agreed  that  the  authorised  Life  of  our 
English  philosopher  forms  a  valuable,  and  indeed  necessary 
supplement  to  his  Autobiography;  and  it  is  also  agreed  that 
a  difficult  task  has  been  ably  and  conscientiously  fulfilled  by 
his  literary  executor. 

The  Autobiography  was  not  carried  down  beyond  the  year 
1882,  when  Mr.  Spencer  was  sixty-two;  but  he  was  destined 
to  live  to  December  1903,  with  twenty-one  years  more  of 
life,  and  a  life  of  great  activity  until  the  last  few  years.  Dr. 
Duncan's  work,  accordingly,  down  from  chapter  xvi.,  i.e. 
the  larger  part  of  his  600  pages,  is  distinct  from  the  matter 
in  the  previous  volumes  of  autobiography. 

It  completes,  illustrates,  and  explains  the  view  of  the 
philosopher  so  elaborately  drawn  by  himself  in  his  own 
memoir;  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  it  gives  us  a  different 
portrait  of  the  man,  or  a  new  reading  of  his  indefatigable 
life-work  other  than  that  which  we  had  in  the  earlier  book. 
It  is  a  lasting  satisfaction  to  all  who  love  the  progress  of 
science  and  the  cause  of  philosophic  truth,  to  feel  that,  for 
our  principal  English  philosopher  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
we  now  possess  not  only  an  absolutely  exhaustive  record  of 
his  entire  mental  and  moral  endowments,  but  also  an  un- 

1  Life  and  Letters  of  Herbert  Spencer,  by  David  Duncan,  LL.D. 
Methuen  and  Co.     8vo.     155.     1908. 

393 


394  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

impeachable  account  of  the  genesis  of  his  ideas  and  (so  to 
speak)  the  esoteric  evolution  of  the  whole  Philosophy  of 
Evolution.  No  philosopher  of  ancient  or  modern  times  has 
ever  had  his  inmost  brain  and  heart  dissected  for  us  with 
more  patient  insight.  And  no  known  system  of  philosophy 
has  ever  been  so  elaborately  probed,  discussed,  defended? 
and  expounded,  or  with  greater  care  to  leave  no  point  un- 
guarded and  no  misunderstanding  uncorrected. 

The  degree  of  agreement  in  many  fundamental  doctrines 
between  the  Positivist  School  of  thought  and  Herbert  Spencer 
is  so  large,  and  the  honour  that  I  and  my  colleagues  pay  to 
his  vast  philosophic  labour  has  been  so  amply  displayed, 
that  it  is  needless  here  to  attempt  any  general  estimate  of 
his  life-work.  And,  again,  the  essential  points  of  difference, 
wherein  we  refuse  to  accept  his  guidance,  have  been  so  often 
explained  by  myself  and  by  others  that  I  have  no  mind  to 
return  to  them  now.  I  will  only  say  that,  after  the  lapse  of 
nearly  five  years  and  careful  study  of  the  Autobiography 
and  the  Life,  for  my  own  part  I  entirely  hold  by  all  that 
I  said,  both  in  his  honour  as  in  criticism,  in  my  Herbert 
Spencer  Lecture,  igoj  (Clarendon  Press.  Pp.  30),  as  well  as 
in  my  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense  (Macmillan,  1907.  Pp. 
334-405).  Both  these  books  of  mine  show  how  profound 
was  the  respect  which  I  invariably  felt  for  his  character  and 
ideals  over  an  intimacy  of  more  than  forty  years;  and  they 
prove  how  fairly  and  courteously  I  argued  the  cardinal 
grounds  on  which,  as  a  follower  of  Comte,  I  felt  bound  to 
state  disagreement. 

The  eighteenth  chapter  of  Dr.  Duncan's  Life  is  mainly 
occupied  with  a  controversy,  at  once  philosophical  and  per- 
sonal, between  Mr.  Spencer  and  myself  in  1884-85.  In 
the  story  of  minute  particulars  of  the  affair,  if  Dr.  Duncan 
thinks  them  worth  recording,  I  have  not  the  least  complaint 


HERBERT    SPENCER'S    "LIFE"  395 

to  make,  and  I  am  perfectly  satisfied  to  leave  candid  minds 
to  draw  their  own  conclusions.  In  my  Philosophy  I  re- 
printed without  change  the  articles  in  which  I  criticised 
Spencer,  and  I  adhere  to  every  argument  therein  contained. 
I  am  confident  that  I  have  finally  refuted  the  idea  that  the 
Unknowable  can  be  made  the  basis  of  anything  that  can  be 
called  religion;  and  I  also  unmistakably  showed  that  Mr. 
Spencer's  Synthetic  Philosophy  had  the  fatal  defect  of  leav- 
ing no  place  for  religion  in  the  true  sense.  No  thinker 
of  importance  has  accepted  Mr.  Spencer's  religion  of  the 
Unknowable,  and  I  think  the  new  Life  conclusively  shows 
us  that  Mr.  Spencer  himself  came  to  see  at  last  that  there 
was  not  so  much  between  us  as  he  thought. 

Mr.  Spencer  made  a  real  mistake  (as  he  soon  admitted) 
when  he  had  my  essays  republished  in  America  with  refu- 
tations of  his  own  in  notes,  without  my  knowledge  and 
consent,  and  in  violation  of  the  copyright  of  myself  as  well 
as  of  the  Review.  Looking  back  after  more  than  twenty 
years  and  reading  in  the  Life  my  own  letters  (of  which  I  had 
no  copies),  I  cannot  see  that  I  remonstrated  with  needless 
warmth  at  what  was  in  fact  an  unwarrantable  literary  offence. 
I  should  have  been  proud  to  publish  a  joint  volume,  provided 
I  had  been  allowed  to  comment  on  his  essays  as  he  com- 
mented on  mine  —  behind  my  back.  It  was  a  perfectly 
fair  question  to  ask  him:  what  was  going  to  be  done  with 
the  profits?  It  pointed  to  the  hopeless  dilemma  in  which 
his  eagerness  to  engage  in  controversy  had  landed  him. 
And  it  was  absurd  to  pretend  that  this  very  awkward  question 
affected  his  "honour,"  or  that  I  had  dreamed  of  charging 
him  with  any  thought  of  money  in  the  matter.  I  well  knew 
that  most  of  his  philosophic  work  was  truly  gratuitous,  as 
indeed  was  my  own.  And  I  was  quite  entitled  to  point  out 
to  him  that  he  had  overlooked  the  question  of  money ;  which, 


396  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

as  considerable  profits  were  quite  probable,  would  make 
a  very  embarrassing  problem.  The  problem  has  never 
been  solved  to  this  day.  The  problem  is  this.  Two  well- 
known  writers  carry  on  a  controversy  over  some  months  in 
a  leading  Review.  One  writer,  without  the  knowledge  of 
the  other  or  of  the  Review,  republishes  all  the  essays  of 
both  writers,  adding  in  footnotes  hostile  comments  of  his 
own  upon  his  adversary's  essays,  but  admitting  no  comments 
or  replies  to  his  own.  The  controversy  excites  much  interest 
in  two  countries.  The  book  sells,  and  profits  are  made. 
Both  authors  disclaim  accepting  any  profits  whatever. 
Quaere,  what  is  to  be  done  with  the  proceeds  of  sale? 

I  cannot  accept  the  view  of  some  over-nice  people,  es- 
pecially amongst  theologians,  that  controversy  in  any  form 
is  a  mistake,  if  not  positively  wicked.  Controversy  on 
philosophical  problems,  fairly  maintained  by  competent 
reasoners,  is  an  invaluable  instrument  for  reaching  truth, 
and  has  been  used  by  moralists  and  teachers  with  excellent 
effect  from  Aristotle  and  St.  Paul  down  to  Voltaire,  Bentham, 
Mill,  and  Spencer.  But  the  passion  with  which  from  boy- 
hood till  death  Spencer  flung  himself  to  refute,  and  often  to 
denounce,  any  opinion  contrary  to  his  own,  uttered  by  any 
one  in  the  most  obscure  place,  was  rather  overdone.  It 
comes  out  more  in  the  Life  than  it  did  even  in  the  Auto- 
biography. It  has  enabled  posterity  more  thoroughly  to 
estimate  his  own  nature  and  to  understand  his  ideas.  But 
it  gave  rather  a  wrong  impression  of  his  force  of  character, 
and  it  certainly  wasted  too  much  of  his  time. 

All  the  same,  it  is  rather  laughable  for  him  or  his  biographer 
to  complain  of  controversy  and  to  talk  about  the  "storms" 
with  which  he  was  beset.  A  thinker  who  for  sixty  years 
rejoiced  to  run  counter  to  almost  every  current  opinion,  and 
who   announced   the  most  startling  novelties   of  his  own, 


HERBERT    SPENCERS       LIFE  397 

need  not  have  been  surprised  if  those  who  differed  from  him 
expressed  their  dissent.  Positivists  have  to  live  in  a  world 
of  opposition  and  ridicule  which  they  might  truly  call 
"a  storm."  Mr.  Spencer  was  uniformly  treated  by  us  with 
profound  respect.  But  when  he  gratuitously  assailed 
Auguste  Comte  with  every  form  of  satire  he  was  master  of, 
he  surely  need  not  complain  of  "the  storm"  that  fell  on  him 
when  those  who  had  devoted  their  whole  lives  to  the  synthe- 
sis of  Comte  attempted  a  respectful  reply.  Perhaps  Mr. 
Spencer  looked  on  Positivists  as  examples  of  the  beast  whom 
the  French  naturalist  described  as  — tres  mediant:  —  quand 
on  Vattaque,  il  se  defend.  The  biographer  seems  to  imply 
that  it  was  unfair,  and  almost  immoral,  to  criticise  Spencer, 
because  criticism  would  be  sure  to  rouse  him  to  waste  his 
invaluable  time  in  making  answer. 

It  is  a  far  more  agreeable  task  to  note  the  many  funda- 
mental points  on  which  the  synthesis  of  Comte  and  the 
Synthetic  Philosophy  of  Spencer  are  in  unison.  And  still 
more  is  it  a  source  of  pride  to  us  to  feel  how  entirely  we  were 
at  one  with  him  in  his  life-long  contest  with  the  vainglorious 
spirit  of  War  and  Aggression  that  is  the  curse  of  our  age. 
Towards  the  close  of  his  life  Spencer  was  drawn  towards  us 
by  our  appeals  for  peaceful  industry  and  inter-racial  justice. 
I  never  forget,  and  he  never  forgot,  how  we  worked  together 
with  Lord  Hobhouse,  John  Morley,  and  the  Liberal  M.P.'s 
of  1882,  to  form  an  Anti-Aggression  League  and  to  check 
that  grasping  ambition  which  led  to  so  many  crimes  in 
Egypt,  India,  and  South  Africa. 

But  there  is  a  further  point  of  common  interest  which  the 
Life,  perhaps  for  the  first  time,  makes  clear  to  the  public. 
With  all  his  philosophic  differences  with  Comte  (and  I  have 
elsewhere  shown  that  he  greatly  overstated  these  differences, 
owing  to  his  own  complete  ignorance  of  Comte's  own  writings, 


398  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

and  of  almost  all  philosophical  literature,  ancient  or  modern), 
ultimately  Spencer  settled  down  into  what  was  practically 
Faith  in  Humanity  and  the  Service  of  Man.  His  letter  to 
myself  of  December  4,  1892  (p.  324),  conclusively  shows  this. 
He  refused  to  call  it  religion:  he  said  this  was  ethics.  And 
it  was  in  that  sense  that  he  repudiated  the  Religion  of  Hu- 
manity. As  he  truly  wrote  to  me,  "the  difference  is  a  matter 
of  names."  The  letter  of  December  4  turned  on  my  reply 
to  Professor  Huxley,  now  reprinted  as  essay  eighteen  in  my 
Philosophy  of  Common  Sense  (p.  308).  In  that  essay  I 
showed  Mr.  Huxley,  that,  in  spite  of  his  abusing  Comte  and 
repudiating  his  idea  of  religion,  he  was  in  essentials  entirely 
with  us  in  hoping  for  the  future  of  humanity.  Mr.  Spencer, 
with  these  essays  before  him,  announced  substantial  agree- 
ment. And  I  believe  that  both  Spencer  and  Huxley  differed 
from  Comte  on  the  problem  of  ethics  and  on  the  progress  of 
human  civilisation  very  much  less  than,  in  their  controversial 
hours,  either  of  these  philosophers  admitted  or  knew. 


XVII 

MUNICIPAL   MUSEUMS   OF   PARIS 

(From  "The  Fortnightly  Review"  1894) 

There  are  not  a  few  things  in  the  municipal  government  of 
Paris  which  no  sensible  Englishman  would  desire  to  imitate 
in  London  —  amongst  these  are  the  wholesale  demolition  of 
old  streets,  the  monotony  of  sundry  new  streets,  the  passion 
for  a  geometric  plan,  and  the  habit  of  renaming  public  places 
every  few  years,  if  possible  so  as  to  convey  an  insult  to  Con- 
servatives and  priests.  But  there  are  certain  things  in  the 
municipal  organisation  of  Paris  which  are  a  model  for  the 
civilised  world  to  follow,  and  which  must  fill  Londoners 
with  wonder  and  envy.  Amongst  these  are  the  fine  histori- 
cal and  artistic  foundations  of  the  city,  the  historical  Mu- 
seum and  Library,  the  educational  institutions,  and  the 
noble  Municipal  Hall,  now,  we  hope,  finally  completed. 

There  are  at  least  two  institutions  which  London  may 
be  said  pre-eminently  to  need,  and  which  have  now  been 
carried  out  in  Paris  with  extraordinary  energy  and  skill. 
The  first  of  these  is  an  adequate  Council  Hall  and  offices; 
the  other  is  an  adequate  historical  Museum,  a  scientific 
history  of  the  city,  and  an  historical  Library,  specially  de- 
voted to  the  antiquities  of  London,  answering  to  the  Musee 
Carnavalet  of  Paris.  For  London  the  difficulty  arises  from 
the  double  government,  the  mischievous  survival  of  the  old 
"  City"  in  rivalry  with  the  new  city  one  hundred  times  larger. 
This  nuisance  is  now  in  a  fair  way  to  be  ended  —  a  fact  which 

399 


400  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

makes  it  all  the  more  urgent  to  consider  the  want  of  a  fit 
municipal  building  and  local  institutions  worthy  of  the 
amalgamated  city  —  the  richest  and  most  vast  in  the  world. 

In  the  Guildhall,  as  yet  monopolised  by  the  effete  Corpora- 
tion of  Lord  Mayor  and  Aldermen,  London  has,  it  is  true, 
a  hall  which  in  antiquity,  scale,  and  historic  traditions  is 
worthy  of  it,  were  it  not  disfigured  by  vile  adjuncts  and  mean 
ornaments.  But  the  Guildhall  is  a  mere  hall,  and  offers 
no  facilities  for  such  offices  as  would  be  needed  for  an  united 
London  government.  Whether  the  Guildhall  could  be 
ultimately  incorporated  with  a  fitting  municipal  building, 
whether  it  stands  on  a  suitable  and  central  site,  are  matters 
which  we  need  not  now  consider.  What  is  certain  is,  that 
the  offices  at  present  connected  with  the  Guildhall  are  hardly 
worthy  of  the  old  Corporation  of  London,  and  would  be 
utterly  unworthy  of  the  new  Corporation  of  London,  as  it  is 
to  be,  were  it  not  that  the  present  London  County  Council 
Buildings  are  even  more  glaringly  unworthy,  inconvenient, 
and  discreditable  to  our  colossal  and  wealthy  city. 

The  Museum  and  Library  at  Guildhall  are  creditable 
institutions,  but  neither  of  them  is  specially  devoted  to 
London  and  its  history,  and  they  cannot  be  compared  for 
a  moment  with  the  immense  collection  of  the  Mus£e  Carna- 
valet;  and  though  the  old  Crypt  is  interesting  as  an  archi- 
tectural relic  of  the  fifteenth  century,  its  vaults  form  a  most 
insufficient  place  to  house  historical  objects  for  public  ex- 
hibition. London,  as  soon  as  it  is  finally  amalgamated  and 
reorganised,  will  need  a  new  City  Hall  and  offices,  and  it 
ought  to  have  a  special  Museum  and  Library  for  the  history  of 
London,  and  an  authoritative  history  such  as  that  of  Paris. 
Paris  now  possesses  these  in  a  form  more  perfect  and  com- 
plete than  any  city  of  Europe  ever  had.  And,  using  the 
experience  of  some  recent  visits,  I  propose  to  say  something 


MUNICIPAL   MUSEUMS   OF   PARIS  401 

of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  of  Paris,  and  of  its  adjunct,  the  Musee 
Carnavalet. 

The  Hotel  de  Ville,  rebuilt  since  1871,  on  the  site  and  on 
the  lines  of  the  beautiful  old  building  of  Francois  I.,  is  un- 
questionably one  of  the  most  noble  palaces  in  Europe,  with 
a  history  that  accords  with  the  history  of  the  city.  The 
Hall  of  the  Corporation  of  Paris  has  had  its  seat  there  for 
some  five  centuries  and  a  half,  ever  since  Etienne  Marcel, 
the  year  after  the  battle  of  Poitiers,  bought  the  old  Maison 
de  Greve,  as  part  of  his  vast  schemes  for  the  defence,  en- 
largement, and  reorganisation  of  the  city.  It  is  a  fitting 
tribute  to  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  men  whom  Paris 
ever  produced,  to  have  raised  under  the  Hall  which  he 
founded  the  fine  equestrian  statue  of  the  famous  Provost 
of  the  Merchants.  The  building,  which  was  begun  on  this 
spot  in  the  time  of  Francois  I.,  was  one  of  the  earliest  and 
one  of  the  most  exquisite  of  all  the  Renascence  palaces  of 
France;  and,  as  completed  under  Henri  IV.,  it  had  no 
superior  in  its  own  style  in  Northern  Europe. 

The  history  of  the  gradual  development  of  the  original 
building  over  a  period  of  more  than  three  centuries  from 
Francois  I.  to  Louis  Napoleon,  its  size  being  increased  eight - 
or  ten-fold  without  its  first  design  and  character  being  de- 
stroyed, is  certainly  one  of  the  most  interesting  episodes  in 
modern  architecture;  but  it  is  too  intricate  and  technical  to 
be  explained  without  plans  and  illustrations.  The  five  cen- 
turies of  Parisian  history  from  the  wild  times  of  Etienne 
Marcel  to  the  wilder  days  of  the  Commune  and  the  con- 
flagration of  May  1871,  centre  round  this  typical  building, 
and  make  the  Place  de  Greve  as  memorable  a  spot  as  any 
in  Europe.  As  every  one  knows,  within  the  last  thirty  years 
of  the  nineteenth  century  the  Hotel  de  Ville  has  been  entirely 
rebuilt,  on  an  even  grander  scale,  and  with  more  elaborate 


402  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

ornamentation;  but  in  design  it  is  a  complete  reproduction 
of  the  building  as  it  stood  in  187 1,  with  certain  modifications, 
and,  as  many  believe,  with  decided  improvements. 

Mr.  P.  G.  Hamerton,  in  his  most  judicious  and  beautiful 
book,  Paris  in  Old  and  Present  Times,  does  not  hesitate  to 
call  the  Hotel  de  Ville  in  its  first  freshness  of  1883,  "the  most 
perfectly  beautiful  of  modern  edifices";  "the  fairest  palace 
ever  erected  in  the  world."  To  many  eyes,  the  mellowed 
tone  of  ten  years  is  a  gain,  and  that  of  a  hundred  years  will 
perhaps  prove  a  greater  gain  still.  Many  will  be  ready  to 
agree  that,  as  it  stands  completed,  it  is  the  most  successful 
and  interesting  building  that  has  been  built  in  Europe  in 
the  nineteenth  century.  The  exquisite  material  and  work- 
manship, the  refinement  and  delicacy  of  its  parts,  the  in- 
genuity of  its  composition,  its  noble  site  and  perfect  appro- 
priateness, make  it  a  source  of  constant  delight  to  a  cultivated 
observer.  To  count  it  as  perfect  or  worthy  to  rank  with 
the  best  buildings  of  a  great  age  —  even  with  such  a  palace 
as  the  original  Louvre  of  Pierre  Lescot,  or  Inigo  Jones's 
original  design  for  Whitehall  —  is  a  very  different  thing. 

If  we  imagine  the  existing  building  without  its  vast  wings, 
i.e.  as  it  was  in  the  time  of  Louis  XIIL,  it  would  be  an  edifice 
of  singular  grace  and  just  proportion.  But  then  it  would 
be  less  than  one-fifth  of  its  present  size,  and  in  no  sense  a 
great  palace  at  all.  As  it  now  stands,  we  cannot  but  notice 
that  it  is  a  vast  superstructure,  or  annexe  to  an  exquisite 
centre.  And,  since  the  huge  annexed  wings  have  two  stories 
besides  the  roof,  while  the  central  block  was  but  one  story, 
the  enormous  wings  designed  in  the  present  century  overtop 
and  overload  the  central  block  designed  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  The  addition  has  been  made  with  signal  skill, 
but  we  cannot  help  seeing  that  the  building  is  the  result  of 
two  distinct  ideas,  and  that  a  lovely  original  gem  has  been 


MUNICIPAL   MUSEUMS   OF   PARIS  403 

converted  into  an  imposing  pile.  But  even  so,  how  bright, 
graceful,  and  harmonious  a  mass  does  it  appear,  glittering 
like  marble  in  the  summer  sun,  as  if  it  had  risen  purified 
from  all  its  sombre  memories  —  the  most  artistic  achieve- 
ment in  stone  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

But  I  have  no  wish  to  venture  on  the  field  of  art  —  a 
ground  where  one  is  apt  to  be  assailed  by  the  professors  of 
plaster  and  brick  —  genus  irritabile  structorum  —  my  present 
purpose  is  to  say  a  word  for  the  civic  appropriateness  of  the 
Hotel  de  Ville.  As  Paris  has  not  grown  out  westwards  and 
northwards  quite  like  London,  but  as  the  Cite  is  still  its 
practical  centre,  the  Hotel  de  Ville  is  perfectly  well  placed  on 
the  historic  site  it  has  held  for  five  centuries  and  a  half. 
No  site  in  Paris,  except  that  of  the  Louvre,  is  superior,  and 
very  few  sites  anywhere  in  Northern  Europe  are  equal  to 
it.  But  when  we  examine  the  building  in  detail,  we  notice 
that  it  forms  an  immense  historical  museum.  It  is  covered 
with  statues,  names,  and  dates  which  recall  every  incident 
in  the  strange  history  of  Paris.  No  one  will  say  that  the 
statues  are  all  works  of  art,  or  that  all  the  men  commemo- 
rated are  statesmen  or  heroes.  But  how  completely  it  puts 
to  shame  the  decorations  of  our  London  Guildhall,  with  the 
gingerbread  portal  of  Dance,  the  tomfoolery  of  Gog  and 
Magog,  and  the  monument  of  Lord  Mayor  Beckford.  The 
Hotel  de  Ville  of  Paris  is  at  least  a  serious  attempt  to  raise 
a  historic  monument  to  the  memory  of  the  actors  in  the  fierce 
communal  life  of  Paris.  Our  Guildhall  reeks  of  Jingoism 
and  turtle  soup. 

Within,  this  vast  building,  which  houses,  it  is  said,  in  its 
various  offices  four  thousand  officials,  has  been  made  a  mu- 
seum of  modern  art.  Those  who  care  may  retort  that  the 
art  is  melodramatic,  which  some  of  it  undoubtedly  is.  But 
it  is  the  best  that  France  to-day  can  produce,  and  it  may 


404  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

fairly  be  doubted  if  the  rest  of  Europe  could  produce  as 
good.  Certainly  some  of  the  sculpture  could  not  be  equalled 
out  of  France,  and  several  of  the  mural  decorations  in  colour 
put  to  shame  what  has  hitherto  been  attempted  amongst  us. 
Some  hundred  works  in  sculpture  —  groups,  reliefs,  statues, 
busts,  caryatides,  chimney-pieces  —  are  by  Barrias,  Gau- 
therin,  Mercie,  Dalou,  Guillaume,  and  Falguiere.  Of  mural 
decorations  in  colour  there  will  be  ultimately  more  than 
two  hundred  distinct  pieces  by  such  painters  as  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  J.  Lefebvre,  Cormon,  Maignan,  Dagnan- 
Bouveret,  Laurens,  Gervex,  Cazin,  B.  Constant,  Besnard, 
Rixens,  Humbert,  and  Bonnat.  The  idea  of  the  Hotel  de 
Ville  decorations  apparently  is  to  make  the  building  a  mu- 
seum of  modern  art,  a  civic  Luxembourg  gallery,  the  prize 
of  the  aspiring  sculptor  and  painter. 

It  is  easier  to  point  out  the  weaknesses  of  these  works 
than  to  show  how  France,  or  even  Europe  in  these  fin  de 
siecle  days,  is  likely  to  get  any  better.  There  is  no  doubt  a 
good  deal  of  jobbery  and  favouritism  in  the  selection  of  the 
artists,  and  not  a  little  of  vulgar  reclame  in  their  productions. 
But  such  is  the  curse  under  which  Art  existed  in  this  closing 
decade  of  the  century.  In  the  meantime  there  are  some 
interesting  experiments  in  mural  decoration.  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  Humbert,  Lefebvre  show  interesting  designs; 
and  at  least  there  is  the  merit  of  variety  of  methods  in  search 
of  some  higher  type.  It  is  now  the  fashion  to  execute  these 
works,  not  in  true  fresco  on  plaster,  but  in  a  preparation  of 
wax  painted  on  canvas.  By  this  means  the  pictures  are 
movable  and  can  be  exhibited  in  the  Salon  before  they  are 
set  in  situ  on  the  walls.  The  device  has  some  advantages 
in  that  the  picture  can  be  preserved  from  destruction,  and 
is  not  liable  to  the  decay  inevitable  to  plaster.  But  though 
it  escapes  the  shiny  surface  of  an  oil  painting,  it  never  attains 


MUNICIPAL    MUSEUMS    OF    PARIS  405 

the  peaceful  radiance  of  true  fresco ;  and  the  practice  of  Salon 
exhibition  introduces  a  new  horror  and  fresh  extravagance 
even  into  the  absurd  art  of  ceiling  painting.  If  Puvis  de 
Chavannes  has  come  nearer  to  mural  decoration  than  his 
compeers  in  Europe,  it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that  Bonnat 
in  his  "Triomphe  de  l'Art,"  designed  for  the  ceiling  of  the 
Salon  des  Arts  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  and  exhibited  in  the 
Champs  Elysees  Salon,  fulfils  one's  ideal  of  the  Degradation 
of  Art  by  extravagance,  vulgarity,  noise,  and  general  inanity. 

Still,  after  counting  all  the  failures  and  all  the  absurdities, 
one  cannot  deny  that  the  Hotel  de  Ville  shows  a  determined 
effort  to  place  the  civic  government  of  Paris  in  one  of  the 
noblest  palaces  of  modern  times,  which  shall  be  at  once  a 
municipal  Heroon,  or  monument  of  civic  patriotism,  and  a 
museum  of  modern  art,  in  all  its  forms,  plastic  and  graphic. 
The  purpose,  the  effort  is  right;  the  execution,  if  faulty, 
takes  its  faults  from  the  age.  It  has  not  been  done  as  it 
was  done  at  Athens,  or  Venice,  or  Florence ;  but  it  has  been 
done  far  more  worthily  than  it  has  been  done  elsewhere  in 
modern  Europe.  And  if  we  take  the  Hotel  de  Ville  as  a 
whole,  inside  and  outside,  its  architecture  and  its  decorations, 
its  sculptures,  paintings,  fittings,  and  ornaments,  it  must  be 
said  —  not  only  to  put  to  shame  Dance's  dismal  Mansion 
House  and  the  make-shift  offices  where  the  County  Council 
governs  London  —  but  even  to  hold  its  own  at  least  on  equal 
terms  with  that  on  which  England  has  lavished  such  vast 
sums  and  such  infinite  labour  (alas !  how  often  in  vain !)  — 
the  Houses  of  Parliament  at  Westminster. 

It  seems  quite  natural  to  Englishmen  to  have  their  national 
Parliament  in  the  most  sumptuous  palace  their  artists  can 
raise,  and  to  fill  it  with  works  of  decorative  art  from  pinnacle 
to  pavement.  A  healthy  instinct  tells  them  that  such  lav- 
ishness  stimulates  patriotism,  and  makes  government  more 


406  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

effective  by  embodying  the  seat  of  authority  with  impressive 
symbols.  Whatever  our  party  politics  and  our  economic 
creed,  all  thinking  men  amongst  us  are  satisfied  within  reason- 
able limits  to  accept  such  public  magnificence,  however  much 
we  grumble  at  the  form  which  it  takes.  In  Paris  this  public 
magnificence  is  the  special  delight  of  civic  patriotism.  And, 
when  we  have  a  civic  patriotism  in  London,  it  will  need  some 
similar  expression.  Londoners  are  fast  learning  this  lesson 
of  municipal  patriotism ;  and  they  cannot  too  early  study  the 
example  in  this  matter  of  the  city  of  Paris,  which  places  its 
urban  government  in  a  building  that  reflects  and  concentrates 
the  beauty  of  their  beautiful  city,  and  forms  at  once  a  museum 
of  art  and  an  historic  monument. 

The  Municipal  Council  of  Paris,  which  has  its  seat  in  the 
Hotel  de  Ville,  is  charged  with  education  as  well  as  care  of 
the  streets,  and  as  such  has  charge  of  many  subordinate 
institutions,  and  has  sundry  affiliated  departments.  One 
of  the  most  characteristic  of  these  is  the  Museum  and  Li- 
brary, now  seated  in  the  Hotel  Carnavalet,  in  the  Marais 
quarter  near  the  Place  des  Vosges  (old  Place  Royal).  This 
is  now  devoted  to  a  museum  of  monuments,  pictures,  sculp- 
tures, and  other  works  relating  to  the  history  of  Paris  in  all 
ages.  It  begins  with  the  Stone  Age  in  the  basin  of  the  Seine, 
and  goes  down  to  the  present  day.  Everything  of  pre- 
historic, Gallic,  Gallo-Roman,  Roman,  Gothic,  Renascence, 
Revolutionary,  and  Modern  art  found  in  Paris,  and  illus- 
trating the  history  of  the  city,  is  here  collected.  It  contains 
a  collection  of  pictures  of  Paris  at  various  ages,  maps,  plans, 
models,  and  other  works,  showing  the  aspect  of  the  city  at 
various  ages  from  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  present  day. 
By  these  it  is  easy  to  get  an  exact  conception  of  Paris  from 
the  time  when  it  was  a  fortified  feudal  city,  and  of  its  gradual 
development  to  the  city  we  see  to-day.     These  pictures  are 


MUNICIPAL    MUSEUMS    OF    PARIS  407 

in  great  measure  the  sources  from  which  M.  Hoffbauer  made 
his  ingenious  pictures  for  his  great  work,  Paris  a  trovers  les 
Ages.  His  large  oil  picture  —  "Paris  under  Henri  III.,  in 
1588"  —  as  seen  from  the  tower  of  the  Louvre,  is  singularly 
instructive.  One  is  glad  to  hear  that  M.  Hoffbauer's  original 
drawings  have  been  procured  by  the  Museum,  and  are  about 
to  be  specially  exhibited.  It  is  seldom  safe  to  trust  in  an 
imaginary  "restoration."  But  Hoffbauer  is  a  learned  anti- 
quarian as  well  as  an  artist,  an  engineer,  an  architect,  and  an 
accomplished  historian.  His  views  of  old  Paris  will  not  only 
bear  very  close  study,  but  are  singularly  vivid  presentations 
of  the  ancient  city  in  all  its  phases. 

The  Hotel  Carnavalet  is,  after  the  Louvre  and  the  Cluny 
museums,  the  most  interesting  and  pleasant  of  the  public 
galleries.  The  accident  that  it  is  situated  far  from  the 
quarters  of  fashion,  tourists,  and  students,  and  also  that  it  is 
a  recent  acquisition  of  the  city,  has  made  it  so  little  frequented 
that,  to  all  but  a  small  fraction  of  visitors,  its  very  existence 
is  unknown.  Yet  no  more  delightful  relic  of  old  France 
survives  in  the  busy  quarter  which  was  the  "quartier  St. 
Germain"  of  the  Francois  and  the  Henris  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  The  chateau  itself  is  a  link  between  the  Renas- 
cence of  the  age  of  Pierre  Lescot  and  the  literary  society  of  the 
Grand  Monarque;  so  that  both  the  objects  exhibited  in  the 
Museum,  and  the  books  and  engravings  of  the  Library,  gain 
a  special  savour  of  their  own  from  being  housed  in  a  rare 
historic  palace. 

The  Hotel  was  built  for  Jacques  des  Ligneris,  President 
of  the  "Parlement,"  by  Pierre  Lescot  and  Bullant,  in  1550, 
and  the  facade  was  adorned  with  some  large  and  beautiful 
reliefs  by  Jean  Goujon.  In  1578  it  was  sold  to  Francoise 
de  la  Beaune,  wife  of  Francois  de  Kernevenoy,  or  Kernevalec, 
a  Breton,  who  had  been  governor  of  Henri  III.     From  them 


408  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

it  has  retained  the  name  of  Carnavalet,  taken  to  be  a  euphoni- 
ous corruption.  The  only  part  of  the  original  building  is  the 
central  block  facing  the  entrance,  and  the  ground  floor  of  the 
three  sides  of  the  court,  including  the  portal  of  entrance  from 
the  street.  Ducerceau  continued  the  work  of  Pierre  Lescot ; 
and  Mansard,  in  1660,  transformed  it  by  adding  the  eastern 
facade  on  the  street,  and  raising  a  new  story  on  the  original 
ground  floor  of  the  three  sides.  The  work  of  the  seventeenth 
century  is  greatly  inferior  to  that  of  the  sixteenth;  but  it 
has  in  no  way  destroyed  its  peculiar  grace.  Madame  de 
Sevigne  leased  and  inhabited  the  Hotel  from  1677  till  her 
death  in  1696.  The  rooms  used  by  her  and  her  daughter, 
Madame  de  Grignan,  the  hardly  worthy  recipient  of  the 
famous  letters,  are  now  devoted  to  the  Library  and  the 
collection  of  prints.  They  retain  their  original  form,  decora- 
tion, and  panelling.  Here  the  student,  by  the  courtesy  of 
the  director  and  the  librarian,  may  pass  delightful  days  of 
study,  surrounded  by  portraits  and  mementoes  of  the  time, 
and  can  almost  cease  to  believe  that  two  hundred  years 
have  passed  since  the  greatest  of  letter-writers  used  to  sit  in 
the  same  room  with  the  same  ornaments,  labouring  at  her 
daily  task  of  love,  or  receiving  the  brilliant  literary  society 
of  her  age. 

It  is  indeed  a  singular  combination  of  good  fortune  and 
good  taste  that  has  placed  the  municipal  museum  and  library 
of  Paris  in  a  building  which  is  itself  a  most  instructive  school 
of  architecture,  a  fascinating  relic  of  the  ancient  city,  and  the 
historic  seat  of  one  of  the  chief  intellectual  movements  of 
the  great  age  of  Louis  XIV.  It  would  not  be  possible  to  find 
for  London  so  appropriate  and  interesting  a  building,  even 
if  the  materials  of  such  a  municipal  museum  and  library  were 
already  at  hand.  Something  of  the  kind  might  have  been 
done,  if  the  Metropolitan  Board  of  Works,  when  it  acquired 


MUNICIPAL    MUSEUMS    OF    PARIS 


409 


old  Northumberland  House,  had  converted  it  into  an  his- 
torical Museum  and  Library  of  London  antiquities,  and  had 
placed  therein  such  objects  and  work  of  art  and  literature 
as  may  now  be  seen  in  the  Guildhall,  South  Kensington,  and 
in  sundry  other  collections  and  libraries.  But  then  London 
would  have  had  to  forgo  its  Grand  Hotel  and  the  Avenue 
Theatre. 

The  collections  in  the  Museum  show  us  types  of  civilisa- 
tion from  the  age  of  the  lake-dwellers,  who  founded  some 
pile  fastnesses  in  the  broads  of  the  Seine,  down  to  our  own 
times;  and  they  serve  to  bring  out  first,  that  Paris  was  an 
earlier  and  much  more  important  Roman  town  than  ever 
was  London,  and  next,  that  the  city  of  Paris  had  no  such 
break  in  its  history  as  befell  London  after  the  departure  of 
the  Romans,  and  the  decay  of  the  Briton  population  until 
its  resettlement  by  the  Saxons. 

From  the  age  of  the  Roman  conquest  down  to  the  Renas- 
cence there  is  a  series  of  objects  —  tombs,  sarcophagi, 
statuettes,  reliefs,  pottery,  inscriptions,  glass,  bronzes,  medals, 
coins,  with  fragments  of  carvings,  doorways,  finials,  and 
statues  from  mediaeval  churches  and  buildings.  From  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  until  our  own  times  there  is 
a  complete  collection  of  paintings,  drawings,  sketches,  plans, 
and  engravings  showing  every  chief  building  and  every  aspect 
of  the  city  at  successive  epochs.  "  The  Cemetery  of  the  Inno- 
cents in  the  sixteenth  century"  (now  the  delicious  square 
of  the  Fountain);  the  "Procession  of  the  League  in  1590"; 
the  "Carrousel  in  the  Place  Royale  in  1612";  the  series  of 
views  by  the  two  Raguenets,  those  of  Callot,  Chastillon, 
Demachy,  and  La  Fontaine,  and  the  engravings  of  Ducer- 
ceau,  Israel  Sylvestre,  Callot,  Perelle,  and  Meryon,  are  of 
great  interest  to  the  historian,  the  archaeologist,  and  even 
to  the  curious  traveller. 


4IO  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

The  paintings,  it  is  true,  are  not,  like  the  engravings 
and  etchings,  of  any  artistic  merit;  but  from  their  general 
precision  and  great  number  and  variety,  they  form  ample 
material  wherewith  to  trace  the  gradual  transformation  of 
the  Paris  of  Louis  XI.  —  the  gloomy,  picturesque,  squalid, 
romantic,  feudal  city,  with  its  enormous  wealth  of  noble 
pointed  architecture  and  grand  castellated  fortresses  —  into 
the  open,  airy,  symmetrical,  Hausmannised  city  of  boulevards 
and  gardens,  palaces  and  hotels,  so  delightful  to  the  man  of 
the  world  and  so  interesting  to  the  man  of  culture.  The 
history  of  this  transformation,  a  process  steadily  continued 
for  about  three  centuries  and  a  half,  is  one  of  the  most  definite 
and  suggestive  episodes  in  modern  history,  and  almost  the 
central  school  wherein  to  study  the  development  of  the  art  of 
living  and  the  art  of  building  that  Northern  Europe  affords. 
The  city  of  Chicago  to-day  is  not  an  inexplicable  fact—  given 
enormous  wealth,  energy,  and  ambition.  But  the  formation 
of  a  far  more  splendid  Chicago  on  the  Seine,  on  the  lines 
and  foundations  and  over  the  very  structures  of  the  Paris 
such  as  it  is  described  by  Victor  Hugo  in  his  Notre  Dame, 
is  one  of  the  most  complex  and  instructive  chapters  in  the 
history  of  European  civilisation. 

As  is  natural,  the  strongest  feature  of  the  Carnavalet  Mu- 
seum is  the  collection  of  works  of  art,  documents,  and  relics 
that  illustrate  the  Revolution.  This  has  been  largely  in- 
creased by  the  gift  of  the  great  collection  of  M.  Alfred  de 
Liesville,  in  1881.  There  is  hardly  a  single  person  named 
in  the  political  movement  from  Marie  Antoinette,  Mirabeau, 
and  Robespierre,  down  to  Louis  Blanc  and  Jules  Michelet, 
of  whom  some  likeness  may  not  be  found  in  the  thousand 
pictures,  engravings,  busts,  medals,  and  drawings  in  this 
collection.  Nor  would  it  be  easy  to  find  a  single  incident 
in   the   long  struggles   of    1789-1802,    1830,  1848,  which   is 


MUNICIPAL   MUSEUMS   OF   PARIS  411 

not  here  represented  or  illustrated  by  mementoes.  For  the 
student  of  the  Revolution  the  most  diligent  reading  of  all 
the  authorities  from  Buchez  et  Roux  or  Berville  et  Barriere 
down  to  Yon  Sybel  and  Mortimer  Ternaux,  will  find  that 
he  has  failed  to  gain  a  vivid  conception  of  the  men  and  epi- 
sodes of  the  time,  till  he  has  mastered  the  contents  of  the 
museum  and  library,  with  its  portraits,  drawings,  documents, 
models,  porcelains,  relics,  and  various  works  of  technical  art. 
There  is  a  rough  but  literal  and  contemporary  sketch  of  the 
"Fete  de  la  Federation,"  or  Gathering  of  the  Federal  Dele- 
gates at  the  Champ  de  Mars  in  1790,  which  carefully  studied 
may  do  much  to  correct  the  clumsy  caricature  that  Carlyle 
has  given'  us  of  a  really  singular  event.  However  alien  to 
English  habits  and  tastes,  it  must  have  been  a  sight  of  ex- 
traordinary power  to  impress  those  present ;  and  it  certainly 
produced  a  profound  reaction  on  the  provinces  of  France. 

The  Library,  which  now  has  more  than  eighty  thousand 
volumes  and  seventy  thousand  prints,  is  an  integral  part  of 
the  Museum;  but  the  collections  have  increased  so  much  of 
late  that  it  is  contemplated  to  remove  to  another  building  the 
Library  which  now  occupies  the  apartments  of  Madame  de 
Sevigne.  The  contents  of  the  Library  relate  to  the  history 
of  Paris ;  and  it  is  a  great  boon  to  those  who  are  studying  it 
to  have  in  one  set  of  apartments  and  with  the  facility  of  im- 
mediate reference  every  book,  pamphlet,  or  illustration  which 
relates  to  the  subject,  and  to  find  at  hand  at  a  moment's 
notice  fine  impressions  of  the  magnificent  works  of  Ducer- 
ceau,  Chastillon,  Sylvestre,  Rigaud,  Perelle,  Viollet-lc-Duc, 
Guilhermy,  and  Hoffbauer,  the  etchings  of  Meryon  and 
Martial,  and  every  known  authority  that  can  throw  light  on  the 
history  of  the  city.  The  Library  is  open  daily  to  all  comers; 
and  the  excellent  librarian,  with  his  courteous  assistant,  is 
ever  ready  to  make  the  reader's  task  easy  and  pleasant. 


412  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

The  history  of  Paris  has  been  more  fully  and  elaborately 
written  than  perhaps  that  of  any  other  city  in  the  world, 
unless  it  be  Rome.  The  histories  begin  with  Jean  de  Jandan 
in  1323,  and  the  latest  is  that  of  Hoffbauer,  Fournier,  and 
others  —  "Paris  a  tr avers  les  Ages  —  Aspects  successifs 
des  monuments  et  quartiers  historiques  de  Paris  depuis  le 
XIII  siecle  jusqu'a  nos  jours.  Par  M.  F.  Hoffbauer,  archi- 
tecte.  Texte  par  Ed.  Fournier,  Paul  Lacroix,  A.  de  Mon- 
taiglon,  A.  Bonnardot,  Jules  Cousin,  etc.  etc.  etc.,  Paris. 
Firmin  Didot,  1872-1882.  2  vols,  folio."  There  is  also  a 
special  historical  society  for  Paris,  the  Societe  de  l'histoire 
de  Paris,  founded  in  August  1874,  which  publishes  annual 
volumes  of  research,  and  forms  a  centre  for  the  pursuit  of 
the  archaeology  of  the  city. 

But  the  most  important  work  is  the  great  collection  insti- 
tuted by  the  Conseil  Municipal  in  1866,  of  which  in  1894 
more  than  thirty  quarto  volumes  had  been  issued,  many  of 
them  splendidly  illustrated.  This  noble  work  contains  the 
text,  edited  and  annotated,  of  all  the  early  histories  of  Paris 
from  the  fourteenth  century,  facsimiles  from  manuscripts 
and  illuminations,  plans  and  drawings,  and  a  great  body  of 
researches  on  all  the  aspects  of  the  city  life  and  industry.  A 
work  of  this  kind  can  hardly  be  undertaken  by  private 
adventure.  It  is  eminently  a  duty  of  some  public  authority. 
When  I  had  the  honour  of  serving  on  the  London  County 
Council,  I  desired  to  induce  the  Council  to  undertake  a  simi- 
lar work  for  London ;  but,  owing  to  the  absurd  limits  which 
the  Act  has  placed  on  the  Council's  expenditure,  they  had 
no  power  to  devote  a  shilling  to  promote  such  a  scheme. 
The  Corporation  of  the  City  can  and  do  undertake  something 
of  the  kind.  But  the  Corporation  unfortunately  do  not 
represent  London  and  cannot  act  for  London. 

It  has  often  been  suggested  that  the  Municipal  Govern- 


MUNICIPAL   MUSEUMS   OF   PARIS  413 

ment  of  London  would  do  well  to  send  over  a  small  com- 
mission of  experts  to  study  the  administrative  system  and 
municipal  institutions  of  certain  great  towns  in  France  and 
Germany,  especially  those  of  Paris  and  Berlin.  Amongst 
the  most  striking  lessons  they  would  bring  back  would  be  a 
thorough  examination  and  report  on  the  Hotel  de  Ville  of 
Paris,  its  history  and  organisation,  and  the  historical  museums 
and  libraries  connected  with  it.  It  cannot  be  many  years 
now  before  public  opinion  will  insist  on  the  united  and 
reconstituted  City  of  London  having  a  Hall  and  Palace 
worthy  of  its  vast  resources  and  gigantic  tasks.  And  among 
the  various  undertakings  which  the  new  Council  of  the  Old 
City  will  have  to  take  in  hand  are  an  adequate  Museum  of 
London  antiquities,  a  Library  of  London  illustrations,  and  a 
comprehensive  history  of  London  in  all  its  phases,  and  in 
all  sides  of  its  long  and  memorable  annals. 


XVIII 

PARIS   IN   1851   AND   IN   1907 

{From  "  The  Nineteenth  Century"  1907) 

My  first  knowledge  of  Paris  was  in  the  summer  of  1851,  in 
the  days  of  the  Second  Republic,  and  during  a  visit  to  that 
city  in  May  and  June  1907  I  was  again  struck  by  all  the 
changes  and  contrasts  in  the  aspect  of  things  that  fifty-six 
eventful  years  had  brought  about.  It  happened  that  on 
my  way  to  Switzerland  I  was  detained  in  Paris;  and,  as  I 
was  myself  in  practical  quarantine  and  debarred  from  the 
society  of  my  friends,  I  had  to  occupy  my  leisure  in  strolling 
about  the  streets,  meditating  on  the  enormous  developments 
and  ravages  of  half  a  century,  giving  a  new  study  to  all  the 
museums,  galleries,  public  institutions,  and  other  "sights" 
which  I  fondly  supposed  I  had  exhausted  twenty  or  thirty 
years  ago.  For  some  weeks  I  was  just  the  "man  in  the 
street,"  the  tourist  freshly  arrived  in  the  "  Ville  Lumiere"  — 
"doing  its  shows"  as  if  for  the  first  time,  a  travelling  Rip 
Van  Winkle  wondering  at  the  new  world  upon  which  he  had 
alighted. 

I  call  it  a  "new  world"  because,  although- 1  first  knew 
Paris  in  1851,  have  visited  it  almost  every  year  since,  have 
lived  in  French  families,  made  constant  studies  in  its  mu- 
seums, and  indeed  twenty-one  years  ago  had  "personally 
conducted"  a  large  party  from  Newton  Hall  who  spent  a 
week  there  in  June  1886,  I  had  never  quite  realised  the  vast 
changes,    additions,    and    improvements    which    twenty    or 

414 


PARIS  IN  185 1  AND  IN  1907  415 

thirty  years  have  brought.  Men  long  past  middle  life  are 
loth  to  make  a  fresh  study  of  a  city  they  believe  they  know 
thoroughly;  and  at  that  age  anything  like  "sight-seeing" 
is  apt  to  be  looked  on  as  a  folly  and  a  nuisance.  An  irksome 
chance  compelled  me  to  undergo  that  corvee  once  more. 
And  I  can  assure  my  contemporaries  that  unless  they  will 
keep  up  to  date  their  knowledge  of  the  topography,  idiosyn- 
crasies, and  art  treasures  of  Paris  they  will  miss  a  great  deal 
which  is  well  worth  knowing  as  well  as  seeing. 

I  had  been  often  in  France  and  had  lived  in  French  pro- 
vincial families  in  the  later  years  of  Louis  Philippe,  so  that 
when  I  came  to  Paris  in  1851  I  was  quite  at  home  with  the 
people,  the  country,  and  the  language.  Looking  back  over 
the  fifty-seven  years  since  then,  one  is  amazed  by  the  enor- 
mous work  of  destruction  and  reconstruction  which  the  third 
emperor  completed,  or  left  as  a  ruinous  legacy  to  the  Third 
Republic  to  complete.  In  half  a  century  the  Haussmannisa- 
tion  de  Paris  has  made  a  spectacle  of  transformation  greater 
perhaps  than  that  of  any  city  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
Paris  in  185 1,  at  least  within  the  inner  boulevards,  was 
substantially  what  Napoleon  the  First  had  made  it  or  had 
designed  to  make  it.  The  old  boulevards  looked  to  be  what 
they  were  —  the  sites  of  the  demolished  ramparts  of  the  city 
and  fosse  —  shady  with  trees  and  broken  into  different  archi- 
tectural forms.  None  of  the  newer  boulevards  had  been 
thought  of  —  Strasbourg,  Sebastopol,  St.  Michel,  Hauss- 
mann,  Magenta,  Raspail,  Malesherbes,  Mont-Parnasse.  I 
have  seen  them  all  in  the  making,  and  so  too  the  Avenue  de 
1' Opera,  de  Breteuil,  Kleber,  Victor  Hugo,  and  scores  of 
others,  with  at  least  one  hundred  great  streets  cutting  through 
the  tortuous  old  city  as  if  by  volleys  of  cannon  balls. 

Strolling  about  the  city  the  other  day  I  tried  to  conjure 
up  again  a  vision  of  the  city  as  I  saw  it  in  185 1  —  within  the 


41 6  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

old  boulevards  a  network  of  narrow,  winding  streets  such  as 
we  see  still  round  the  Rue  du  Temple  on  one  side  of  the  river 
or  about  the  Rue  de  Seine  on  the  other;  the  Rue  de  Rivoli 
not  yet  rebuilt  beyond  the  Louvre;  the  old  historic  houses 
once  inhabited  by  men  famous  in  history,  literature,  and  art ; 
the  quiet  corners  with  traces  of  feudal  castles,  splendid  monas- 
teries, and  Gothic  churches,  grey  and  crumbling  with  en- 
crusted saints  and  angels.  I  remember  Notre  Dame  still 
buried  amid  old  buildings,  and  its  magnificent  facade  in  its 
antique  carving  yet  unpolluted  by  the  sacrilegious  hand  of 
the  restorer.  The  Cite"  on  the  island  was  still  what  it  had 
been  for  five  or  six  centuries,  a  maze  of  old  tenements  and 
labyrinthine  streets.  And  the  inner  bulk  of  the  city  looked 
as  it  had  looked  all  through  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  down  to  the  Revolution.  How  little  of  this  remains 
to-day  !  Old  mansions,  historic  churches,  picturesque  streets, 
and  sleepy  impasses  are  all  gone.  Broad  geometric  avenues, 
roaring  with  huge  motor  and  tram  cars,  have  torn  their  path 
through  them  and  swept  the  old  remnants  into  oblivion. 

Was  this  marvellous  change  a  gain  or  a  disaster  ?  Thou- 
sands of  rare  specimens  of  mediaeval  work,  scenes  of  many 
centuries  of  stirring  events,  street  vistas,  towers,  and  gables, 
dear  to  generations  of  etchers  —  all  have  gone  and  left  not 
a  wrack  behind.  A  huge  transformation  of  old  Paris  was 
inevitable  if  Paris  was  to  remain  the  heart  of  modern  France. 
In  1857  the  population  was  about  one  million;  with  the  new 
suburbs,  it  is  now  almost  three  millions.  This  vast  number 
could  not  be  permanently  cribbed  and  cabined  in  its  old 
mediaeval  labyrinth.  New  lines  of  transit  had  to  be  made. 
We  may  accept  the  new  outer  boulevards,  the  avenues,  and 
broad  streets  outside  the  enceinte  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
But  nothing  will  reconcile  me  to  the  wanton  destruction  caused 
by  the  Boulevard  St.  Germain,  the  annihilation  of  the  island 


PARIS  IN  1851  AND  IN  I907  417 

Cite,  and  the  pompous  extravagance  of  the  Avenue  de  l'Ope*ra. 

The  Opera  and  its  Avenue  were  one  of  the  worst  offences 
of  the  Empire  —  a  monument  of  tasteless  and  insolent  luxury. 
And  the  unfinished  Boulevard  Raspail  is  one  of  the  evil 
examples  of  the  mania  for  reconstruction  and  waste  without 
real  overriding  necessity. 

It  is  notorious  that  under  the  Empire  the  reconstruction  of 
Paris  was  to  a  great  extent  a  political  and  social  device,  and 
even  more  a  corrupt  speculation,  a  financial  gamble.  Paris, 
no  doubt,  had  to  be  entirely  revised.  But  it  ought  to  have 
been  done  with  one-third  less  of  cost  and  half  the  destruc- 
tion. In  the  result  the  municipal  taxation  has  run  up  to 
the  terrible  amount  of  something  like  £4:  105.  per  head. 
Underground  railways,  tram-roads,  motor  omnibus,  motor- 
cycles, automobiles,  and  every  mode  of  conveyance  do  not 
suffice  to  supply  the  ever-increasing  traffic,  while  they  have 
made  Paris  the  most  difficult  and  dangerous  of  cities  to  the 
unwary  man  on  foot.  As  these  vast  Noah's  arks  roar  and 
thunder  down  steep  and  narrow  streets,  as  a  thousand  motors 
tear  about  the  broad  Avenues  and  Places,  as  taximetres  and 
cycles  race  round  corners  without  warning,  one  needs  a  pair 
of  eyes  at  the  back  of  one's  head  and  an  eye  over  each  ear 
as  well  as  under  the  brow.  But  when  all  is  said,  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  the  brilliant  aspect  of  modern  Paris  is  a  peren- 
nial source  of  its  wealth.  And,  though  I  see  little  beauty  in 
the  Opera  or  the  Grand  Palais,  I  am  bound  to  confess  that 
the  scene  from  the  Hotel  de  Ville  to  the  Arc  de  l'Etoile  offers 
far  the  most  resplendent  prospect  that  any  city  has  ever  pro- 
duced since  the  Rome  of  the  Antonines. 

The  point  to  which  I  seek  to  draw  attention  is  the  immense 
additions  to  the  National  Museums  of  Paris  made  in  recent 
years,  and  the  opening  of  a  number  of  newly  acquired  collec- 
tions, many  of  them  even  since  the  Great  Exhibition  of  1900. 


41 8  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Within  a  generation,  to  a  great  extent  within  the  present 
century,  the  public  museums  have  been  so  greatly  recon- 
structed and  enlarged,  and  so  many  new  museums  have  been 
acquired,  that  the  judicious  lover  of  art  may  find  much  of  his 
work  to  do  over  again.  The  Louvre  itself  has  been  entirely 
rearranged  and  enlarged,  and  has  received  by  bequest  and 
purchase  a  series  of  splendid  acquisitions  which  amount  to  a 
new  museum.  The  Greek  antiquities  from  Delphi  are  now 
shown  together  in  excellent  reproductions  which  make  one 
envy  a  Government  that  can  spare  the  necessary  funds  for 
excavations  of  surpassing  interest.  Why  is  England  the 
only  nation  which  is  deaf  to  such  appeals? 

The  Louvre  has,  I  think,  grown  in  a  generation  faster  than 
our  own  National  Gallery  and  British  Museum.  The  addi- 
tions to  the  Greek  and  the  Asiatic  collections  are  of  great 
extent  and  importance.  The  new  galleries  named  after 
Thiers,  Thomy-Thiery,  Morgan,  Rothschild,  are  all  inter- 
esting and  varied.  The  additions  in  the  ground  floor  to  the 
Mediaeval  and  Renascence  antiquities,  the  new  Delia  Robbia 
Hall  on  the  side  of  the  Seine,  the  new  Carpeaux  Hall  on  the 
Rue  de  Rivoli  side,  would  occupy  a  busy  day  to  study;  and 
fresh  works  come  in  each  season  by  bequest,  purchase,  gift, 
or  loan.  The  new  specimens  of  early  Italian  fresco,  panel, 
and  canvas  in  the  Salle  des  Primitifs,  the  reframing  and 
rearranging  of  the  magnificent  Rubens  and  Van  Dycks  in 
the  special  Galeries  Van  Dyck  and  Rubens  are  things  which 
no  traveller  should  fail  to  know,  but  which  the  tens  of  thou- 
sands who  knew  their  Louvre  ten  or  twenty  years  ago  have 
never  seen.  The  whole  of  the  rearrangement  of  the  picture 
galleries  into  French,  Italian,  Dutch,  and  English  Halls, 
with  the  cabinets  round  the  Rubens  Gallery,  are  an  im- 
mense improvement  on  the  unscientific  hanging  which  de- 
lighted the  tourist,  or  worried  the  student,  a  generation  a^o. 


PARIS    IN    1 85 1    AND    IN    I907  419 

The  Museum  of  the  Louvre,  uniting  in  one  our  National 
Gallery,  British  Museum,  and  South  Kensington,  is  so  vast 
—  we  are  told  that  it  occupies  some  two  hours  merely  to 
walk  through  the  galleries  without  stopping  —  that  many  an 
ordinary  tourist  sees  little  more  than  half.  And  those  who 
have  not  visited  it  carefully  since  1900  have  much  to  learn. 
The  Adolphe  Rothschild  bequest  is  a  study  in  itself.  And 
few  but  experts,  one  fears,  climb  the  stairs  of  the  second  story 
and  see  the  collection  of  the  French  modern  schools  — ■  the 
Corots,  Millets,  Daubignys,  Diaz,  Decamps,  and  Rousseaus, 
and  the  bequest  of  Thomy-Thiery  in  a  gallery  bearing  his 
name  (1902).  It  would  be  well  worth  any  young  painter's 
while  to  go  to  Paris  simply  to  see  these.  If  he  would  go  from 
them  to  the  Salon  of  the  day,  he  would  learn  a  lesson  in  the 
art  of  modern  Decadence. 

The  Pavilion  de  Marsan  —  the  North-Western  angle  of 
the  Louvre,  and  the  only  part  of  it  built  under  the  Third 
Republic  — now  holds  the  Museum  of  Decorative  Art;  and 
at  present  it  forms  a  distinct  collection  in  the  hands  of  a 
society,  destined  ultimately  to  pass  to  the  State.  Its  paint- 
ings, sculptures,  wood  and  ivory  carvings,  tapestry,  enamels, 
medals,  jewels,  porcelain,  engravings,  and  lace  are  too  often 
overlooked  in  the  multiplication  of  art  museums  which  Paris 
now  presents  to  the  tourist.  Over  and  above  the  old  State 
collections  which  every  traveller  believes  that  he  knows,  there 
are  now  added  the  wonderful  Chinese  and  Japanese  bronzes 
which  M.  Cernuschi  bequeathed  in  1895  to  the  City  of  Paris; 
the  tapestries  of  the  Musee  Galliera;  the  Chinese  and  Japan- 
ese porcelains  of  the  Musee  Guimet;  the  house  and  designs 
of  Gustave  Moreau  (1898) ;  and  the  Musee  Victor  Hugo  in 
the  Place  des  Vosges  (1903),  containing  a  remarkable  store 
of  works  of  art  which  testify  how  deeply  the  poet  impressed 
his  thought  on  the  imagination  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


420  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Every  tourist  knows  the  Petit  Palais,  the  Luxembourg 
gallery  of  modern  art,  the  Cluny,  and  the  beautiful  Carna- 
valet  Hotel,  the  abode  of  Madame  de  Sevigne,  with  its  im- 
mense collections  of  historic  records  of  the  City  of  Paris, 
its  local  and  personal  reminiscences.  But  few  ordinary 
travellers  realise  the  rate  at  which  all  of  these  are  acquiring 
new  works  by  bequest  or  purchase.  Every  time  I  visit  them 
again  I  am  struck  by  the  growth.  The  Petit  Palais  (1902) 
is  the  property  of  the  city,  and  is  rapidly  filling  with  modern 
paintings  and  sculptures.  The  Cluny  and  the  Carnavalet 
have  largely  benefited  by  recent  gifts,  by  the  Rothschild 
family  as  well  as  from  smaller  collections.  The  Pantheon 
now  has  its  wall  decorations  practically  complete.  Those  of 
Puvis  de  Chavannes  are  admirable  examples  of  true  decora- 
tive art  adapted  to  a  classical  building  both  in  form  and  tone. 
Most  of  the  others  are  noisy  Academy  pictures,  theatrical  in 
composition  and  strangely  out  of  keeping  with  the  building 
in  which  they  stand.  Nothing  is  worse  than  to  thrust  mod- 
ern paintings  on  a  cold  semi-Roman  fane.  The  Pantheon  is 
not  yet  a  success. 

Over  and  above  the  permanent  museums,  Paris  has  a  set 
of  temporary  exhibitions  in  the  season  which  I  found  an 
endless  source  of  interest  and  study.  The  two  great  Salons 
in  the  Grand  Palais  with  many  thousands  of  pictures,  statues, 
drawings,  engravings,  and  gems  —  the  portraits  and  manu- 
scripts in  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale,  the  rearranged  docu- 
ments in  the  Archives  Nationales,  in  the  grandiose  H6tel  de 
Soubise,  the  portraits  of  modern  women  in  the  delicious 
Chateau  de  Bagatelle,  just  acquired  by  the  City  of  Paris 
(1904).  As  one  viewed  the  portraits  of  the  beauties  and 
grandes  dames  of  the  last  Empire  one  could  see  here  and  there 
an  aged  but  distinguished  lady  surrounded  by  her  grand- 
children, looking  at  herself  as  she  had  appeared  in  the  fashions 


PARIS  IN  185 1  AND  IN  I907  42 1 

of  forty  and  fifty  years  ago.  She  no  doubt  admitted  that 
fashion  has  improved.  The  acquisition  of  this  graceful  little 
Chateau  and  its  sweet  English  park  in  the  Bois  du  Boulogne 
has  been  one  of  the  best  prizes  of  the  Conseil  Municipal. 

When  one  passes  from  the  permanent  collections  of  former 
days  to  the  huge  collections  of  contemporary  art,  the  soul 
sinks  within  one  at  the  spectacle  of  universal  degeneration. 
Painting,  sculpture,  porcelain,  jewelry,  all  forms  of  decorative 
art  testify  to  the  same  decline.  And  it  is  a  decline  stamped 
with  one  vicious  craze  which  has  poisoned  genius  and  skill  of 
hand.  That  craze  is  the  passion  to  do  something  new;  some- 
thing which  may  attract  attention;  startle,  even  if  it  disgust 
the  public.  The  curse  on  modern  life  —  the  thirst  for  the 
new,  the  rage  to  get  out  of  the  old  skin  —  is  the  blight  on 
our  literature,  our  art,  our  drama,  our  manners  —  even  our 
morals.  It  is  a  passion  without  aim,  or  conviction,  or  feel- 
ing —  a  mere  restless  itch  to  get  free  from  old  habits  and  to 
get  into  something  uncommon,  it  hardly  matters  what,  if 
only  it  can  announce  itself  as  "unconventional."  It  is  not 
to  be  beautiful  —  indeed  the  beautiful  in  any  form  is  "con- 
ventional" —  rather  it  must  be  ugly,  so  long  as  the  ugliness 
is  unusual.  It  may  be  gross,  absurd,  horrible,  obscene, 
tawdry,  childish,  so  long  as  the  older  generations  would  have 
turned  from  it  with  anger  or  pain.     If  so,  it  is  Vart  nouveau. 

One  who  remembers  what  French  art  was  and  has  seen 
the  Salons  of  the  last  fifty  years  must  note  a  gradual  descent. 
Not  to  speak  of  the  painters  and  sculptors  before  the  Third 
Empire,  when  one  passes  from  the  later  French  artists  in 
the  Louvre  and  the  Luxembourg  to  the  two  Salons,  what 
a  contrast !  What  a  fall !  What  a  pot-pourri !  Compare 
these  contorted  nudities,  these  bleeding  ruffians,  these  acres 
of  pantomime  tableaux,  with  Ingres,  Delacroix,  Gerome, 
Cabanel,    Corot,    Daubigny,    Meissonier,    Troyon,    Millet, 


42  2  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

Pradier,  Barye,  Carpeaux  —  what  a  fall  it  is !  No  man 
of  sense,  of  course,  denies  that  there  are  still  in  France  men 
who  paint  portraits  full  of  life  and  colour,  landscapes  of 
truth,  and  now  and  then  even  of  charm,  men  who  can  model 
the  human  figure  with  complete  mastery,  and  almost  every- 
thing except  grace.  There  is  no  lack  of  skill  of  hand,  in- 
dustry, ambition,  even  a  kind  of  perverse  originality,  in  this 
cosmopolitan  crowd  of  men  and  women  who  shout  to  us 
from  four  thousand  canvases  and  pedestals  to  look  and  see 
how  clever  they  are. 

We  do  not  care  to  see  how  clever  they  are.  We  do  not 
desire  to  see  things  which  no  painter  ever  yet  ventured  to 
paint,  and  no  sculptor  ever  thought  of  modelling,  and  no 
public  ever  yet  submitted  to  be  shown.  We  want  to  have 
things  beautiful  to  look  on,  things  which  recall  to  us  ex- 
quisite visions  of  all  that  is  fair,  pure,  harmonious  on  this 
earth.  And  they  ply  us  with  scenes  which  are  meant  to  be 
repulsive,  which  aim  at  being  ugly,  foul,  or  grotesque.  Their 
baigneuses  and  odalisques  twist  their  naked  bodies  into  shapes 
which  are  meant  to  combine  nastiness  with  queerness. 
Horses  are  painted  of  ultramarine  hue;  seas  are  coloured 
vermilion;  girls  have  lampblack  on  their  cheeks.  The 
painter  says :  "  Take  my  word  for  it  —  I  saw  it  so  —  we  have 
no  conventions  now."  There  is  one  convention  indeed, 
so  ancient,  so  necessary,  so  universal,  that  its  deliberate 
defiance  to-day  may  arouse  the  bile  of  the  least  squeamish 
of  men  and  should  make  women  withdraw  at  once.1 

There  is  no  lack  of  pains,  no  want  of  cleverness,  smart 
"brushwork"  by  the  yard,  and  original  ideas  of  the  grosser 

1  But  I  must  veil  my  protest,  as  Gibbon  says,  in  the  obscurity  of  a 
learned  tongue:  Tarn  in  pictura  quam  in  sculptura,  secundum  con- 
suetudinem  illam  de  veteribus  traditam,  mos  erat  ne  omnia  muliebria 
veris  formis  nee  veris  coloribus  monstrarent,  sicut  in  natura  videri  possent. 
E  contrario,  pictores  hodierni  omnes  corporis  feminei  partes  nuda  veritate 
depingere  gaudent. 


PARIS   IN   1 85 1   AND   IN    1907  423 

type  —  the  "model"  standing,  or  sprawling,  at  ease  and 
smoking  a  short  pipe,  a  surgeon  probing  a  patient's  sore, 
the  unmentionables  of  the  dissecting  room,  of  the  rowdy 
studio,  of  the  Bouge-des-rats  —  plenty  of  all  this,  provided 
it  be  at  once  novel  and  coarse.  There  are  no  doubt  fine 
pictures,  powerful  heads,  and  pleasant  paysages  here  and 
there  on  the  interminable  walls  of  canvas.  But  the  impres- 
sion left  is  that  only  one  picture  in  a  hundred  seriously  aims 
at  giving  us  any  sense  of  beauty,  of  delight  in  some  un- 
noticed side  of  nature,  harmonious  blending  of  form  and 
colour.  The  direct  aim  of  ninety-nine  pictures  is  to  make 
us  stop  to  look  —  if  possible  to  give  us  a  shock  —  e  pater  le 
bourgeois  —  to  amuse  the  vicious,  to  brutalise  the  innocent. 

There  are  still  great  portrait  painters  in  France ;  but  what 
mere  tradesmen's  advertisements  are  most  of  the  portraits 
on  these  walls.  Vulgarity,  pose,  money,  and  swagger  reign 
supreme.  One  would  think  that  the  modistes  of  the  Rue  de 
la  Paix  pay  for  these  portraits  of  Madame  X.,  to  show  what 
elegant  "creations"  their  customers  wear,  what  novelties 
in  patterns  and  materials  are  now  on  view.  The  face  of 
Madame  X.  seems  a  mere  dummy,  a  clothes-horse,  which 
the  painter  threw  in  gratis  while  he  lavished  his  skill  on 
robes,  manteaux,  laces,  and  jewels  of  which  the  shops  hired 
him  to  make  a  sort  of  coloured  fashion-plate.  It  is  difficult 
to  imagine  real  ladies  masquerading  as  mere  lady-assistants 
in  a  smart  show-room. 

And  the  men  —  what  gross,  gluttonous,  insolent  "gold- 
bugs"  they  look  !  Their  heavy  lips  seem  to  smack  of  cham- 
pagne and  partes  defoie  gras;  in  their  obese  trunks  one  seems 
to  hear  the  bullion  ring;  nine  out  of  ten  are  painted  with 
tobacco  between  their  teeth.  Realistic  no  doubt,  but  let 
us  imagine  Bellini's  "Doge  of  Venice,"  or  Van  Dyck's  "Ge- 
vartius"  with  cigarettes  as  the  typical  motif.     Advancing 


424  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

"realism"  will  one  day  perhaps  paint  its  great  men  in  the 
act  of  taking  solace  in  some  other  natural  function  of  the 
body.  But  in  our  age  of  apolaustic  abandon  tobacco  is 
thought  to  give  the  guinea-stamp  of  manly  dignity  and  noble 
bearing. 

Sculpture  has  been  the  central  French  art  ever  since  the 
days  of  Jean  Goujon,  Puget,  and  Houdon  —  nay,  ever  since 
the  carved  portals  of  Reims,  Chartres,  and  Amiens.  But 
now,  alas !  even  sculpture  is  failing  her.  There  is  any 
amount  of  cleverness,  knowledge,  up-to-dateness.  But  the 
morbid  love  of  the  new,  the  real,  the  ugly  has  perverted  it 
to  base  uses.  A  hideous  old  woman  in  a  tattered  skirt, 
with  pendent  dugs  and  knotty  claws,  may  be  quite  natural 
and  real,  but  is  not  a  subject  for  art  in  a  life-size  statue. 
Nothing  can  make  a  coal-heaver's  broadbrim  hat  and  cordu- 
roy trousers  sculpturesque.  And  a  modern  gentleman  in 
a  silk  hat  and  frock  coat  looks  foolish  in  a  group  surrounded 
by  naked  Graces  and  classical  Virtues.  There  is  cleverness 
still  in  the  sculpture  of  to-day,  but  as  high  Art  it  is  in  de- 
cadence. 

Let  me  fortify  my  indictment  by  the  authority  of  one  of 
the  greatest  of  living  sculptors.  Dr.  Rodin  himself  has  just 
told  us  that  all  Art  is  in  decadence.  M.  Rodin  is  a  man  of 
genius,  of  great  gifts,  and  daring  imagination.  But  I  make 
bold  to  say  that  Rodin  himself  is  a  typical  example  of  this 
decadence,  and  has  done  as  much  to  teach  and  promote 
decadence  as  any  man  living.  His  extraordinary  powers 
and  his  originality  have  made  him  the  high  priest  and  apostle 
of  decadence.  In  his  desire  to  attain  to  something  new  in 
his  art,  he  has  desperately  plunged  into  the  negation  of  art. 
In  his  passion  to  avoid  "conventions"  he  has  revelled  in  sheer 
awkwardness  and  brutality.  And  yearning  to  get  rid  of 
prettiness,  smoothness,  and  "finish,"  he  invented  that  absurd 


PARIS   IN    185 1    AND   IN    1907  425 

fad  —  sketchiness,  haziness,  confusedness  in  the  plastic 
art.  It  is  mere  mimicry  of  Michel  Angelo's  unfinished 
figures. 

Now  the  raison  d'etre  of  the  plastic  arts  is  definiteness, 
fixity,  clearness,  beauty  and  precision  of  form.  We  want 
to  see  exact  shapes,  solid  beings,  not  to  have  suggested  to 
us  imaginary  spirits  or  ghosts  of  men.  A  hazy  statue  is  no 
more  possible  than  a  prosy  poem,  a  vague  demonstration, 
or  mystical  geometry.  It  is  bad  enough  when  some  young 
coxcomb  paints  as  if  on  a  wax  ground  and  then  melts  it  till 
his  colours  have  mixed  and  his  lines  are  blurred.  A  mystical 
poem  is  conceivably  true  art.  But  a  blurred  statue  is  an 
outrage  on  good  sense.  And  for  a  statue  to  repel  us  by  its 
ugly  form  and  to  disgust  us  by  its  brutal  idea  is  indeed  the 
bathos  of  art. 

I  take  the  famous  "Penseur"  which  has  now  been  set  up 
in  front  of  the  portico  of  the  Pantheon.  What  has  this 
brawny  ruffian  to  do  with  Thought,  with  Heroes,  with  any- 
thing or  any  one  commemorated  in  the  Temple  of  Genevieve 
and  of  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  and  Victor  Hugo?  The  idea 
seems  suggested  by  the  brutal  boxer  in  the  new  National 
Museum  at  Rome.  If  this  huge  naked  bruiser  is  thinking 
at  all,  he  is  trying  to  understand  in  his  thick  skull  why  the 
other  man  had  pounded  him,  or  how  he  could  contrive  to 
pound  the  other  man.  Nothing  that  can  be  called  rational 
thought,  or  noble  aspiration,  ever  entered  this  beefy  bulk 
or  crossed  these  sullen  vulgar  features.  The  "thinker" 
is  nothing  but  a  corpulent  athlete,  crumpling  himself  up  in 
an  ungainly  attitude.  We  were  always  told  to  walk  round 
a  fine  statue  and  we  should  find  it  noble,  beautiful,  natural, 
from  every  point  of  view.  I  walked  round  and  round  the 
"Penseur,"  and  found  him  awkward,  ugly,  and  queer,  in 
every  aspect.     Yet  this  figure  is  now  hailed  as  one  of  the 


426  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

triumphs  of  modern  Art.  Why?  Mainly  because  it  is 
new  —  something  which  ancient  art  would  never  tolerate ; 
because  it  is  repulsive;  because  it  is  grotesque  in  its  incon- 
gruity and  its  irrationality.  Yes !  but  it  is  "  a  new  departure" 
—  it  scandalises  the  old-fashioned  world,  and  creates  "  a 
sensation."  Ah !  that  is  decadence  indeed,  whatever  be  its 
power  and  its  life. 

Well,  there  is  one  art  which  still  flourishes  in  France;  it 
has  never  been  so  brilliant,  so  popular,  nay  so  dominant. 
Painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  jewelry,  may  all  be  vul- 
garised by  the  love  of  sensation  and  the  ostentation  of  wealth ; 
but  one  art  is  still  supreme.  Caricature  never  was  so  much 
alive,  so  much  sought,  so  well  paid.  Go  and  see  the  Ex- 
hibition of  the  Humorists  in  the  Palais  de  Glace  if  you  desire 
to  enjoy  a  living  art.  It  is  crowded  all  day  with  the  rank, 
beauty,  and  fashion  of  Paris.  Go  and  see  its  diabolically 
clever  caricatures  of  notable  persons  from  Edward  the  Seventh 
to  a  music-hall  singer,  its  ingenious  placards  to  boom  soap, 
wine,  corsets,  cigarettes,  hair  dyes,  and  dog  biscuits.  There 
shines  the  true  artist  in  his  glory.  There  you  will  be  able  to 
penetrate  to  the  mysteries  of  the  life-school,  the  whims  of  the 
Quartier  Latin,  the  buffooneries  of  the  cabaret,  the  orgies 
of  the  cocottes  —  in  fact,  the  seamy  side  of  Paris-Boheme. 
And  these  dainty  sketches  are  crowded  all  day  long  with 
smart  mondaines  and  American  "buds."  The  immortal 
art  of  caricature  is  in  its  zenith.  A  few  fogies  and  tourists  go 
to  the  Salon;  but  Tout-Paris  gives  itself  the  rendezvous  at 
the  Humorists. 

France,  like  the  rest  of  Europe,  is  being  rapidly  Ameri- 
canised—  with  Yankee  "notions,"  syndicates,  telephones, 
and,  above  all,  advertisements.  The  world  is  being  turned 
into  one  big  advertising  hoarding ;  and  life  is  a  round  of  trades- 
men's "drummers."     The  best  paid  artists  are  the  men  who 


PARIS    IN    1 85 1    AND    IN    I907  427 

draw  picture-posters.  The  meadows  beside  the  railways 
are  fragrant  with  the  merits  of  a  new  chocolate,  lung  tonic, 
or  Dunlop  tyres.  Half  the  press  consists  of  open  or  con- 
cealed trade  puffs.  A  short  story  hides  a  cryptic  recom- 
mendation for  a  new  cure  for  cancer;  and  a  speech  by  the 
Prime  Minister  is  broken  off  by  a  picture  of  a  bathy-colpic 
corset  or  an  office  clerk  suffering  from  backache. 

Literature  itself,  like  Art,  Drama,  Dress,  Trade  —  even 
Pleasure  and  Vice  —  has  drawn  new  life  from  the  Columbian 
science  of  puffery.  Literature,  being  in  low  water,  has 
invented  a  device  to  restore  its  lost  reputation  and  its  gains. 
The  puffers'  arts  have  reduced  the  reprints  of  the  standard 
authors  to  a  matter  of  centimes.  To  meet  this  the  living 
authors  are  organising  a  movement  to  resist  the  concurrence 
des  Morts.  They  call  on  the  legislature  to  put  a  tax  of  10 
per  cent  on  deceased  writers  in  order  to  suppress  this  unfair 
competition  of  the  dead,  to  protect  contemporary  in- 
dustry, to  pay  them  the  proceeds  of  the  tax  derived  from 
the  perverse  habit  of  reading  Voltaire  and  Victor  Hugo 
instead  of  Gyp  and  Jules  Lemaitre.  That  is  a  lesson  in 
Tariff  Reform. 

Being  out  of  humour  with  painting  and  sculpture  — 
partly  perhaps  from  being  in  quarantine  myself  —  I  con- 
soled myself  with  music  and  drama.  By  good  luck  I  came 
in  for  the  Tercentenary  Night  of  Corneille  at  the  Francais, 
the  Beethoven  Commemoration  at  the  Opera,  and  a  noble 
performance  of  Gluck's  Alceste  at  the  Trocadero.  Mounet 
Sully's  Polyeucte  is  as  fine  as  ever,  and  some  good  judges 
believe  the  play  to  be  the  masterpiece  of  Corneille.  Those 
persons  who  have  never  read  Corneille  since  they  were  at 
school  and  rarely  see  his  tragedies  at  the  Francais  have  little 
idea  how  magnificent  they  are  on  the  stage,  how  real  and 
great  are  the   possibilities  of  the  classical  drama.     Shake- 


428  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

speare  by  all  means ;  but  in  strict  tragedy  the  verdict  of  the 
ages,  of  the  majority  of  the  human  race,  is  for  the  Attic 
rather  than  the  Elizabethan  type. 

I  heard  the  masterpieces  of  Beethoven  and  Gluck  and 
Wagner's  Valkyrie  sung  at  the  Opera  by  the  same  singers 
within  the  same  week.  And  there  again  what  is  now  called 
"old-fashioned  conventions"  triumphed  over  modern  sensa- 
tionalism. Wagner  is  a  great  genius,  a  dramatist  of  power, 
a  superb  harmonist  and  all  that  —  we  all  agree.  But  it 
is  rank  Decadence  that  puts  him  beside  Gluck  and  Bee- 
thoven. He  kept  us  till  half-past  one  in  the  morning  listen- 
ing to  the  endless  longueurs  in  which  two  savages  shout  at 
each  other  in  monotonous  recitatives.  Who  knows  what 
the  quarrel  is  about,  and  why  by  the  hour  together  they 
brandish  their  swords  at  one  another  and  yet  never  close? 
Why  these  discords?  Why  this  never-ending  tautophony? 
Why  the  cacophony?  Why  the  exhausting  length?  Why 
the  deafening  blare  of  brass?  The  only  answers  I  ever 
heard  were  because  it  is  German  —  and  because  it  is 
"weird,"  new,  revolutionary. 

There  is  nothing  weird  about  Gluck.  I  heard  his  Alceste 
in  the  great  amphitheatre  of  the  Trocadero,  splendidly  per- 
formed in  the  daylight  on  the  great  classical  stage  without 
curtain,  scenery,  or  footlights.  Gluck  —  not  Wagner  — 
is  the  real  master  of  the  future.  His  is  the  type  of  musical 
drama  —  almost  as  sweet  as  Mozart,  more  dramatic  than 
Beethoven,  less  fuliginous  and  torrential  than  Wagner.  I 
heard  Orfeo  and  Alceste  in  the  same  week,  and  I  hold  Alceste 
to  be  quite  as  fine  as  the  more  popular  Orfeo.  Why  is  it  not 
heard  at  Covent  Garden?  As  one  listened  to  its  glorious 
melodies  and  stately  dialogues  in  broad  daylight  on  a  semi- 
classical  stage  innocent  of  curtain,  scene-shifting,  and  lime- 
light, with  its  free  spaces  for  chorus  and  processions,  one 


PARIS    IN    185 1    AND    IN    1907  429 

could  imagine  what  Sophocles  and  Euripides  would  have 
been  to  an  Attic  audience.  What  vulgar  dogs  we  must  be 
that  London  has  never  seen  Alceste,  being  busy  with  Twad- 
dles and  a  new  turn  at  the  Tivoli !  Ours  is  the  age  of 
vulgar  dogs. 

Alceste  convinced  me  of  what  I  have  long  felt,  that  natural 
daylight,  a  broad  stage,  and  a  fixed  architectural  scene  are 
the  best  conditions  of  true  drama,  ^schylus,  Sophocles, 
and  Euripides  showed  their  plays  in  the  open  air  and  in  full 
light.  So  did  Shakespeare.  The  footlights,  the  shifting 
canvas  scenes,  the  lime  lantern  dodging  the  "star,"  are  the 
death  of  real  tragedy.  They  make  "staginess"  inevitable. 
The  silly  trick  of  darkening  the  auditorium  till  one  cannot 
see  one's  next  neighbour,  and  often  darkening  the  stage  till 
we  hear  voices  but  cannot  see  the  speakers  —  all  the  other 
tomfooleries  of  what  is  called  "realism"  on  the  stage  —  are 
the  ruin  of  art.  We  do  not  want  realism;  we  want  poetry, 
action,  tragedy,  and  if  this  cannot  be  given  us  without  magic- 
lantern  tricks,  it  had  better  be  left  alone.  The  drama  will 
never  revive  till  we  give  up  all  tricks. 

As  I  was  in  quarantine  I  was  not  able  to  visit  politicians 
and  had  to  content  myself  with  the  newspapers,  which,  with 
rare  exceptions,  are  the  organs  of  sordid  speculators  and  ad- 
vertising tradesmen.  I  followed  closely  the  two  extraordinary 
strikes,  that  of  the  seamen  and  that  of  the  southern  wine- 
growers. Both  had  the  almost  unprecedented  quality  of 
being  directed  against  the  legislature  —  not  against  em- 
ployers, and  concerned  with  laws  not  with  wages.  They 
reveal  a  sinister  condition  of  modern  industry  and  may  be  the 
precursors  of  unexpected  social  convulsions.  They  point 
to  disintegration  and  anarchy,  class  wars  and  economic 
manias. 

Of  the  great  religious  struggle  not  a  trace  was  to  be  seen. 


430  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

The  Church  is  disestablished  in  France,  but  no  change 
whatever  can  be  noticed  by  the  eye.  The  temples  are  open 
as  usual;  Mass  and  Vespers  are  said  as  usual;  nothing 
apparently  is  changed,  except  that  the  worshippers  are  more 
scanty  than  ever,  both  in  cities  and  in  villages.  I  entered 
the  churches  and  attended  services  at  all  hours  both  in  Paris 
and  in  the  country,  and  was  almost  always  alone.  In  one 
large  city,  the  streets  and  market-place  of  which  were  thronged, 
I  visited  a  fine  old  Norman  church  that  I  had  known  and 
loved  as  a  boy  in  1845.  Since  the  days  of  the  Crusaders, 
who  had  prayed  in  its  walls  before  they  set  forth,  it  has  never 
been  so  empty.  In  the  Chapel  of  Our  Lady  a  priest  was 
muttering  his  rite  without  a  single  worshipper  in  sight.  In 
the  fine  old  Church  of  Compiegne  where  Jeanne  d'Arc  took 
the  sacrament  when  she  sallied  forth  to  her  last  fight  before 
the  town,  I  made  a  pilgrimage  to  the  memory  of  the  purest 
saint  in  the  Calendar  of  Comte  —  though  she  is  not  in  the 
Calendar  of  Rome.  The  town  was  en  fete,  and  five  thousand 
patriotic  clubmen  were  meeting  to  parade  before  the  statue 
of  the  saviour  of  France.  But  in  her  favourite  church  I  was 
left  to  my  meditations  in  solitude. 

On  Trinity  Sunday  I  joined  the  service  in  Notre  Dame  in 
Paris.  How  sublime  is  that  survival  of  the  great  age  of 
Catholic  Feudalism !  What  miracles  of  devotion,  chivalry, 
and  art  does  it  not  record !  What  endless  revolutions  of 
thought  and  art,  of  government  and  of  society,  have  those 
soaring  vaults  looked  down  on  unchanged  and  unyielding ! 
I  have  always  loved  the  massive  dignity  of  Notre  Dame, 
which  I  have  known  for  fifty-six  years,  long  before  its  eight 
centuries  of  masonry  and  sculpture  had  been  modernised 
by  pedants.  I  came  back  to  it  last  month,  and  found  its 
fabric,  its  ritual,  its  outward  form  the  same,  but,  save  for 
the  tourists,  it  was  almost  deserted.    The  worshippers  within 


PARIS    IN    1851    AND    IN    I907  43I 

its  enclosure  were  fifty-two  women  and  twenty-five  men. 
But  as  I  listened  to  the  grand  music  swelling  up  into  those 
exquisite  arcades  and  traceries  I  felt  it  still  to  be  the  most 
beautiful  thing  in  all  Paris  —  almost  the  only  thing  that 
survives  of  true  and  pure  art. 


XIX 

THE   ELGIN   MARBLES 

{From  "The  Nineteenth  Century"  1890) 

It  is  surely  high  time  for  us  to  think  how  and  when  the  Elgin 
Marbles  are  to  be  restored  to  the  Acropolis.  There  they 
will  have  ultimately  to  rest;  and  the  sooner,  and  the  more 
gracefully  it  is  done,  the  better.  The  hundred  years  which 
have  passed  since  they  left  Athens  have  entirely  changed  the 
conditions  and  the  facts.  The  reasons  which  were  held  to 
justify  Lord  Elgin  in  removing  them,  and  the  British  Gov- 
ernment in  receiving  them,  have  one  and  all  vanished.  All 
those  reasons  now  tell  in  favour  of  their  being  restored  to 
their  national  and  natural  home.  The  protection  of  these 
unique  monuments,  the  interests  of  students  of  art,  pride 
in  a  national  possession,  and  the  vis  inertia  of  leaving  things 
alone,  all  call  aloud  to  us  to  replace  on  that  immortal  steep 
the  sacred  fragments  where  Pericles  and  Pheidias  placed 
them  more  than  two  thousand  years  ago. 

It  is  usual  to  say,  that  in  the  British  Museum  these  priceless 
works  are  safe,  whilst  they  would  be  exposed  to  danger  in 
Athens;  that  in  London  the  art  students  of  the  world  can 
study  them,  whilst  at  Athens  they  would  be  buried  out  of 
sight;  that  the  Elgin  Marbles  are  now  become  a  "British 
interest "  as  completely  as  Domesday  Book ;  that  as  they  have 
belonged  to  the  nation  for  a  century,  it  is  too  late  to  talk  about 
disturbing  them  now. 

Every  one  of  these  assertions  is  a  sophism,  and  the  precise 

432 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  433 

contrary  is  in  every  case  true.  They  would  be  much  more 
safe  from  the  hand  of  man  on  the  Acropolis  than  they  possibly 
could  be  in  London ;  and  whilst  the  climate  and  soot  of  Blooms- 
bury  are  slowly  affecting  their  crumbling  surface,  the  pure 
air  of  the  Acropolis  would  preserve  them  longer  by  centuries. 
Athens  is  now  a  far  more  central  archaeological  school  than 
London;  and  the  art  students  of  the  \yorld  would  gain  im- 
mensely if  the  ornaments  of  the  Parthenon  could  be  seen 
again  together  and  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  Parthenon 
itself.  The  Parthenon  Marbles  are  to  the  Greek  nation  a 
thousand  times  more  dear  and  more  important  than  they 
ever  can  be  to  the  English  nation,  which  simply  bought  them. 
And  what  are  the  few  years  that  these  dismembered  frag- 
ments have  been  in  Bloomsbury  when  compared  with  the 
2240  years  wherein  they  stood  on  the  Acropolis? 

The  stock  argument  for  retaining  the  marbles  in  London 
is  that  they  are  safe  here,  and  nobody  knows  what  might 
happen  at  Athens.  In  one  sense,  we  trust  they  are  safe  in 
London;  but  they  stand"  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city,  and 
no  man  can  absolutely  say  that  the  Museum  might  not  be 
destroyed  in  some  great  fire  in  Bloomsbury.  As  to  political 
or  riotous  commotions,  they  are  no  more  to  be  dreaded  in 
Athens  than  they  are  in  London.  Whilst  Paris,  Berlin, 
Vienna,  and  Rome  have  been  the  scenes  of  fearful  street 
battles  within  late  years,  there  has  been  nothing  of  the  kind 
at  Athens  since  the  establishment  of  the  kingdom.  And, 
even  if  there  were,  it  is  inconceivable  that  either  a  street 
fight  or  a  fire  could  touch  the  Acropolis.  One  might  as  well 
say  that  a  row  in  the  Canongate  at  Edinburgh  might  destroy 
the  colonnade  on  Calton  Hill.  Even  a  bombardment  of 
the  city  of  Athens  would  not  touch  the  Acropolis,  except 
with  direct  malice  aforethought.  It  may  be  taken  for  cer- 
tain that  the  Museum  now  standing  on  the  summit  of  the 


434  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Acropolis  is  a  spot  ideally  protected  by  nature  from  any 
conceivable  risk  of  fire,  accidental  injury,  civil  or  foreign 
war.  One  can  only  wish  that  the  contents  of  the  Louvre, 
the  National  Gallery,  and  the  Vatican  were  anything  like 
as  safe.  And  it  so  happens  that  this  ideally  safe  spot  for 
preserving  priceless  relics  is  the  very  spot  where  a  glorious 
genius  and  a  wonderful  people  placed  them  two  thousand 
years  ago. 

Admit  that  the  Elgin  Marbles  are  (humanly  speaking) 
safe  in  Bloomsbury  from  any  conceivable  risk  of  fire  or  riot 
—  which  is  to  admit  a  good  deal  —  still  it  is  certain  that 
the  climate  of  Bloomsbury  is  far  more  injurious  to  them 
than  the  climate  of  the  Acropolis.  The  climate  of  the 
Acropolis  is  certainly  the  very  best  for  their  preservation 
that  Europe  could  afford ;  and  the  climate  of  Bloomsbury 
is  certainly  one  of  the  worst.  Every  one  knows  that  the 
marvellous  Pentelic  marble  resists  in  the  Attic  air  the  effect 
of  exposure  for  very  long  periods  whilst  its  surface  is  intact. 
When  the  surface  is  gone  and  the  cracks  begin  to  pass  deep 
into  the  substance,  the  deterioration  of  the  marble  goes  on 
rapidly.  Go  to  our  Museum  and  observe  the  cruel  scars 
that  have  eaten  in  parallel  lines  the  breast  and  ribs  of  the 
River  God  (Ilissus).  Night  and  day  those  scars  are  being 
subtly  filled  with  London  soot.  It  is  no  doubt  true  that 
the  antique  marbles  are  occasionally  washed  and  cleaned. 
But  at  what  a  cost,  and  at  what  a  risk! 

Of  course  the  man  in  Pall  Mall  or  in  the  club  arm-chair 
has  his  sneer  ready  —  "Are  you  going  to  send  all  statues 
back  to  the  spot  where  they  were  found?"  That  is  all 
nonsense.  The  Elgin  Marbles  stand  upon  a  footing  entirely 
different  from  all  other  statues.  They  are  not  statues :  they 
are  architectural  parts  of  a  unique  building,  the  most  famous 
in  the  world;    a  building  still  standing,  though  in  a  ruined 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  435 

state,  which  is  the  national  symbol  and  palladium  of  a  gallant 
people,  and  which  is  a  place  of  pilgrimage  to  civilised  man- 
kind. When  civilised  man  makes  his  pilgrimage  to  the 
Acropolis  and  passes  through  the  Propylsea,  he  notes  the 
exquisite  shrine  of  "Nike  Apteros,"  with  part  of  its  frieze 
intact  and  the  rest  of  the  frieze  filled  up  in  plaster,  because 
the  original  is  in  London.  He  goes  on  to  the  "  Erechtheion," 
and  there  he  sees  that  one  of  the  lovely  Caryatides  who  sup- 
port the  cornice  is  a  composition  cast,  because  the  original 
is  in  London.  He  goes  on  to  the  Parthenon,  and  there  he 
marks  the  pediments  which  Lord  Elgin  wrecked  and  left 
a  wreck  stripped  of  their  figures ;  he  sees  long  bare  slices  of 
torn  marble,  whence  the  frieze  was  gutted  out,  and  the 
sixteen  holes  where  the  two  ambassadors  wrenched  out  the 
Metopes.  We  English  have  wrung  off  and  hold  essential 
parts  of  a  great  national  building,  which  bears  wreckage 
on  its  mangled  brow,  and  which,  like  CEdipus  at  Colonus, 
holds  up  to  view  the  hollow  orbs  out  of  which  we  tore  the 
very  eyes  of  Pheidias. 

When  Lord  Elgin  committed  this  dreadful  havoc,  he  may 
have  honestly  thought  that  he  was  preserving  for  mankind 
these  precious  relics.  The  Turks  took  no  heed  of  them, 
and  the  few  Greeks  could  only  mutter  their  feeble  groan  in 
silence.  But  everything  is  now  changed.  To  the  Greek 
nation  now  the  ruins  on  the  Acropolis  are  far  more  important 
and  sacred  than  are  any  other  national  monuments  to  any 
other  people.  They  form  the  outward  and  visible  sign  of 
the  national  existence  and  re-birth.  But  for  the  glorious 
traditions  of  Athens,  of  which  these  pathetic  ruins  are  the 
everlasting  embodiment,  Greece  would  never  have  attracted 
the  sympathy  of  the  civilised  world  and  would  not  have  been 
assisted  to  assert  herself  as  a  free  State.  At  the  foundation 
of  it,   Corinth,  astride  on  both  seas  on   her  isthmus,  had 


436  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

many  superior  claims  as  a  capital.  The  existence  of  the 
Acropolis  made  any  capital  but  Athens  impossible,  as  it 
makes  Greece  herself  incorporated  on  the  base  of  her  ancient 
glory. 

Thus  to  free  Greece  the  Acropolis  is  the  great  national 
symbol:  more  than  the  Forum  and  the  Palatine  are  to 
Rome,  more  than  the  Duomo  and  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  are 
to  Florence,  more  than  Notre  Dame  and  the  Louvre  are  to 
Paris,  more  than  the  Abbey,  Westminster  Hall,  and  the 
Tower  are  to  London.  Rome,  Florence,  Paris,  London, 
have  scores  of  historic  monuments  and  national  memorials; 
and  they  all  have  many  other  centuries  of  ancient  history 
and  many  other  phases  of  national  achievement.  Athens 
has  only  one :  Greece  is  centred  round  Athens :  and  ancient 
Athens  means  the  Acropolis  and  its  surroundings. 

We  profess  to  be  proud  of  our  Tower  and  Abbey  and 
our  national  monuments.  To  the  patriotic  Athenian  of  to- 
day the  Acropolis  represents  Tower,  Abbey,  St.  Stephen's, 
Westminster  Hall,  Domesday  Book,  Magna  Carta,  and  all 
our  historic  memorials  together.  He  has  nothing  else;  and 
the  sight  day  and  night  of  that  vast,  lonely,  towering  mass 
of  ruin,  with  its  weird  but  silent  message  from  the  past,  pro- 
duces on  the  subtle  imagination  of  a  sensitive  people  an 
effect  infinitely  deeper  than  even  our  Abbey  produces  on  a 
Londoner.  And  every  morning  and  evening  that  the  Athe- 
nian raises  his  eyes  to  his  Abbey  he  sees  the  scars  where,  in 
a  time  of  national  humiliation,  a  rich  Englishman  wrenched 
off  slices  of  the  building  to  place  in  his  collection  at  home. 
What  would  be  the  feelings  of  an  Englishman  if  he  saw  the 
Abbey  gutted  within  this  century,  and  knew  that  the  shrine 
of  the  Confessor,  the  tombs  of  the  Kings,  the  altar  screen, 
the  chair  and  sword,  and  the  Purbeck  columns  from  the 
transepts   and   the  Chapter  House,   had  been   carried   off, 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  437 

during  the  occupation  of  the  country  by  a  foreign  enemy,  by 
an  amateur  with  a  fine  taste  for  antiques,  and  a  good  nose 
for  a  bargain,  to  put  into  his  "collection"?  The  case  is  far 
stronger  than  this :  for  the  Elgin  Marbles  are  not  statues,  or 
tombs;  they  form  indispensable  parts  of  the  most  symmet- 
rical building  ever  raised  by  man. 

Naturally,  the  antiques  found  in  Greece  form  a  far  more 
important  interest  to  the  whole  nation  than  they  can  to  a 
nation  which  has  simply  purchased  or  "conveyed"  them. 
No  people  in  the  world  are  so  intensely  jealous  of  their 
national  memorials  as  the  Greeks  of  to-day.  They  form 
their  claims  to  sympathy  as  a  people,  the  symbol  of  their 
traditional  past,  their  peculiar  claim  to  a  unique  interest, 
and  no  doubt  much  of  what  Demetrius  the  silversmith  and 
Alexander  the  coppersmith  told  their  fellow-citizens  was  the 
practical  value  of  Diana  of  the  Ephesians.  At  a  moderate 
computation  the  ruins  and  the  museums  are  worth  £100,000 
a  year  to  the  Greek  people.  They  have  made  stringent  laws 
not  only  to  keep  every  fragment  of  antiquity  in  the  country, 
but  to  keep  every  fresh  discovery  in  the  very  district  and 
spot  where  it  is  found.  We  need  not  discuss  the  policy  of 
this.  A  very  strong  government  recently  found  it  impos- 
sible to  move  the  "Hermes"  of  Praxiteles  from  Olympia  to 
Athens.  And  no  doubt  the  ruins  of  Olympia  are  now  worth 
a  new  railway  to  the  modern  inhabitants  of  Elis. 

Greece  is  now  quite  full  of  museums.  In  Athens  alone 
there  are  seven  or  eight,  of  which  three  are  principal  and 
distinct  national  collections.  These,  at  any  rate,  are  as  suit- 
able, as  well  kept,  and  as  accessible  as  are  the  museums  of 
any  capital  in  the  world.  They  are  year  by  year,  and  almost 
month  by  month,  increasing  in  value  and  importance.  With 
excellent  judgment  the  Greeks  have  resolved  to  form  a 
special  Museum  on  the  rock  of  the  Acropolis,  conveniently 


438  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

sunk  in  the  south-eastern  angle,  in  which  is  placed  every 
fragment  recovered,  not  in  situ,  from  any  building  raised  on 
the  Acropolis  itself.  This  Museum,  small  as  it  is,  is  already 
to  the  art-student  one  of  the  most  indispensable  in  existence. 
Here  are  the  exquisite  reliefs  of  "Nike";  here  are  all  the 
detached  fragments  which  have  been  recovered  from  the 
Parthenon,  from  pediments,  metopes,  and  frieze;  here  too 
are  the  archaic  figures  from  the  temples  destroyed  by  Xerxes 
before  Salamis.  This  last  feature  alone  places  this  little 
Museum  in  the  front  rank  of  the  collections  of  the  world 
for  purposes  of  studying  the  history  of  art.  For  the  history 
of  glyptic  art,  the  Acropolis  has  within  the  last  twenty 
years  become  the  natural  rendezvous  of  the  student.  The 
Greeks,  Germans,  English,  and  French  have  founded  special 
schools  of  archaeology,  and  other  nations  have  formed  less 
formal  centres  of  study.  The  result  is  that  Athens  is  now 
become  a  school  of  archaeology,  far  more  important  in 
itself,  and  far  more  international  in  character,  than  London 
is  or  ever  can  be. 

By  what  right,  except  that  of  possession,  do  we  continue  to 
withhold  from  the  students  and  pilgrims  who  flock  to  the 
Acropolis  from  all  parts  of  the  civilised  world  substantive 
portions  of  the  unique  building  which  they  come  to  study, 
those  decorations  of  it  which  lose  half  their  artistic  interest 
and  their  historic  meaning  when  separated  from  it  by  4000 
miles  of  sea?  The  most  casual  amateur,  as  well  as  the 
mere  tiro  in  art,  can  at  once  perceive  how  greatly  the  Phei- 
dian  sculptures  gain  when  they  can  be  seen  in  the  Attic 
sunlight,  alongside  of  the  architectural  frame  for  which  they 
were  made,  and  at  least  under  the  shadow  of  the  building 
of  which  they  form  part.  The  ruined  colonnades  are  neces- 
sary to  explain  the  carvings;  and  the  carvings  give  life  and 
voice  to  the  ruined  colonnades.     These  demigods  seem  to 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  439 

pine  and  mope  in  the  London  murk;  in  their  native  sun- 
light the  fragments  seem  to  breathe  again. 

On  the  Acropolis  itself  every  fragment  from  Pheidias's 
brain  seems  as  sacred  and  as  venerable  as  if  it  were  the 
very  bones  of  a  hero.  In  a  London  Museum  they  are  objects 
of  curious  interest,  like  the  Dodo  or  the  Rosetta  stone  — 
most  instructive  and  of  intense  interest  —  but  they  are  not 
relics,  such  as  make  the  spot  whereon  we  stand  sacred  in 
our  eyes,  as  do  the  tombs  of  the  Edwards  or  the  graves 
of  the  poets  in  our  Abbey.  In  the  British  Museum  the 
excellent  directors,  feeling  how  much  the  genius  loci  affects 
these  Elgin  Marbles,  have  placed  models,  casts,  and  various 
devices  to  explain  to  the  visitor  the  form  of  the  Acropolis 
and  the  place  of  these  carvings  in  the  Parthenon.  Thev 
try  to  bring  the  Acropolis  into  our  Elgin  Room  at  Blooms- 
bury,  instead  of  sending  the  contents  of  the  Elgin  Room  to 
the  Acropolis !  One  might  as  well  imagine  that  the  tombs 
of  the  kings  in  our  Abbey  had  been  carried  off  to  put  in  a 
museum  in  St.  Petersburg,  and  that  the  Russian  keeper  of 
the  antiquities  had  set  up  a  model  of  the  Abbey  beside  them, 
in  order  to  give  the  Muscovite  public  a  faint  sense  of  the 
genius  loci. 

It  is  enough  to  make  the  cheek  of  an  honest  Englishman 
burn  when  he  first  sees  the  ghastly  rents  which  British  (North 
British)  taste  tore  out  of  this  temple,  and  then  passes  into 
the  humble  museum  below  where  the  remnants  are  pre- 
served. They  are  not  so  important  as  our  Elgin  trophies, 
but  they  are  very  important  —  beautiful,  unique,  and  quite 
priceless.  And  then  come  long  ranges  of  casts  —  the  origi- 
nals in  London  —  and  so  the  whole  series  is  maimed  and 
disfigured.  In  the  case  of  at  least  one  metope  the  Acropolis 
Museum  possesses  one  half,  the  other  half  of  which  is  in 
London.     So  that  of  a  single  group,  the  invention  of  a  con- 


44°  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

summate  genius,  and  the  whole  of  which  is  extant,  London 
shows  half  in  marble  and  half  in  plaster  cast,  and  the  Acropo- 
lis shows  the  other  half  in  marble  and  the  rest  in  plaster. 
Surely  it  were  but  decent,  if  we  honestly  respect  great  art, 
that  the  original  should  be  set  up  as  a  whole.  But  it  seems 
that  in  the  present  century  we  show  our  profound  venera- 
tion for  a  mighty  genius  by  splitting  one  of  his  works  into 
two  and  exhibiting  the  fragments  severed  at  opposite  cor- 
ners of  Europe,  as  mediaeval  monks  thought  their  country's 
honour  consisted  in  exhibiting  here  a  leg  and  here  an  arm 
of  some  mythical  patron  saint. 

No  one  in  his  senses  would  talk  about  restoring  the  Par- 
thenon, and  no  one  dreams  of  replacing  the  marbles  in  the 
Pediments.  What  might  be  done  is  to  replace  the  Northern 
Frieze  of  "Nike  Apteros,"  and  restore  the  Caryatid  to  her 
sisters  beneath  the  cornice  of  "Erechtheion."  The  differ- 
ence between  the  effect  of  the  Pheidian  fragments  as  seen  in 
Bloomsbury  and  that  of  the  Pheidian  fragments  as  seen 
on  the  Acropolis  is  one  that  only  ignorance  and  vulgarity 
could  mistake.  Who  would  care  for  the  Virgins,  Saints,  and 
"Last  Judgements"  from  the  portals  of  Amiens,  Reims,  or 
Chartres  if  they  were  stuck  on  pedestals  and  catalogued 
at  Bloomsbury,  with  or  without  cork  models  of  the 
cathedral  ? 

The  notion  that  the  interests  of  art  demand  the  retention 
of  parts  of  a  great  building  in  a  foreign  country  is  a  mere 
bit  of  British  Philistinism  and  art  gabble.  The  true  interests 
of  art  demand  that  the  fragments  which  time  and  man  have 
spared  of  the  most  interesting  building  in  the  world  should 
be  seen  together,  seen  in  their  native  sky  and  under  all  the 
complex  associations  of  that  most  hallowed  spot.  One 
might  as  well  argue  that  the  interests  of  art  would  be  served 
if  Michel  Angelo's  "Last  Judgement"  were  stripped  off  the 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  44I 

Sistine  wall,  cut  up  into  square  blocks,  and  hung  in  gold 
frames  in  Trafalgar  Square. 

It  is  idle  now  to  reopen  the  story  of  the  original  plunder. 
British  self-complacency  has  long  been  content  with  the  old 
maxim  — fieri  non  debuit,  factum  valet.  Happily  the  Eng- 
lish name  and  our  national  literature  has  cleared  itself  of 
offence  by  a  noble  protest  which  will  outlive  the  names  both 
of  Elgin  and  of  Herostratus.  Byron  said  not  one  word  too 
much.  But  since  the  days  of  Byron  and  Lord  Elgin  every- 
thing has  changed.  Athens  is  now  a  city  as  regularlv  gov- 
erned, as  much  frequented,  and  nearly  as  large  as  Florence 
or  Venice.  The  Greek  nation,  small  as  it  is,  is  as  much 
entitled  to  honourable  consideration  as  Holland,  Belgium, 
Denmark,  or  Switzerland.  The  familiar  sneers  of  Pall  Mall 
and  Fleet  Street  about  Greek  democracy  and  the  Hellenic 
blood  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  matter.  Greece  is  now 
a  friendly  nation  with  a  regular  government.  It  has  also 
within  recent  years  become  a  settled  country,  open  to  all 
men,  and  one  of  the  great  centres  of  art  study  for  the  civilised 
world.  To  Greece  the  Acropolis  is  more  important  than  are 
Malta  and  Gibraltar  to  England.  The  question  is  how  long 
this  country,  in  an  ignorant  assumption  of  "the  interests  of 
art,"  will  continue  to  inflict  a  wholly  disproportionate  humilia- 
tion on  a  small  but  sensitive  and  otherwise  friendly  people. 

How  the  restoration  could  be  managed  it  is  not  worth 
discussing  here.  Obviously  by  some  kind  of  international 
treaty.  The  bulk  of  the  Parthenon,  of  course,  is  now  on 
the  Acropolis.  But  London  holds  the  most  precious  rem- 
nants from  both  Pediments.  Paris,  it  seems,  has  one  of  the 
South  Metopes,  some  fragments  from  the  West  Pediment, 
and  a  small  section  of  the  East  Frieze.  London  has  fifteen 
Metopes,  out  of  the  original  ninety-two.  What  remains  of 
the  rest  are  still  in  situ,  or  in  the  Acropolis  Museum.     Lon- 


442  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

don  has  the  larger  part  of  the  South,  North,  and  East  Frieze ; 
the  remainder  is  on  the  Acropolis,  except  a  section  at  Paris. 
Happily  the  noble  West   Frieze  remains  nearly  perfect   in 
situ.     Thus  the  Acropolis  now  contains :  — 
i.   All  that  remains  of  the  Building  itself. 

2.  Some  grand  fragments  from  both  Pediments. 

3.  All  that  remains  of  ninety-two  Metopes,  except  sixteen. 

4.  About  one-third  of  what  exists  of  the  Frieze.1 

The  question  is,  How  can  all  these  sections  be  reunited 
on  the  Acropolis?  Obviously  by  an  international  treaty,  in 
which  France,  for  reasons  that  need  not  be  stated,  would 
willingly  join.  She  would  be  proud  to  lay  down  her  petty 
fragments  on  the  altar  of  Athene,  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing 
Albion  disgorge.     The  Greeks  would  accept  any  terms :  — 

Hoc  Ithacus  velit,  et  magno  mercentur  Atridae. 

It  would  not  consist  with  our  honour  to  make  a  paltry 
bargain.  Let  the  35,000  pieces  of  silver  (or  was  it  gold?) 
that  we  paid  to  Milord  perish  with  him.  We  shall  restore 
the  Parthenon  Marbles  much  as  we  restored  the  Ionian 
Islands  and  Heligoland  to  their  national  owners,  because 
we  value  the  good  name  of  England  more  than  unjust  plun- 
der. If  the  barkers  of  Pall  Mall  and  the  opposition  rags 
have  to  be  quieted,  let  us  give  them  to  munch  a  commercial 
treaty.  A  little  Free  Trade  with  England  would  satisfy  the 
growlers,  and  would  do  the  Greeks  permanent  good.  But 
let  us  have  no  higgling.  Let  us  do  the  right  thing  with  a 
free  hand. 

Was  it  too  much  to  hope  that  such  a  treaty  might  be 
made  by   the   Englishman  whom  the  world  knows  as  the 

1  These  proportions  are  stated  roughly,  for  the  general  argument,  and 
not  with  archaeological  pretensions.  I  know  that  the  archaelogists  bark 
and  growl  at  a  lay  interloper,  like  the  street  dogs  of  Constantinople  at 
a  strange  cur. 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  443 

lover  of  Homer,  and  whom  the  Hellenes  of  to-day  always 
associate  with  their  country  and  their  hopes?  He  earned 
the  gratitude  of  Greeks,  the  thanks  of  England,  and  the 
respect  of  honest  men  everywhere  when  he  restored  the 
Western  Islands  to  their  own  countrymen.  He  might  have 
earned  a  more  enduring  and  touching  gratitude  by  replacing 
on  the  sublime  rock  wherein  centre  so  many  of  the  memories 
of  mankind  those  inimitable  marbles  which  Pericles  and 
Pheidias  set  up  there  in  a  supreme  moment  of  the  world's 
history.  It  is  a  cruel  mockery,  in  the  name  of  "high  art," 
to  leave  them  scattered  about  the  galleries  of  Europe. 

All  the  circumstances  are  entirely  changed  since  the  Elgin 
Marbles  were  removed  in  1801.  The  Greek  nation  is  now 
a  free,  independent,  and  civilised  nation  in  Europe.  Their 
claim  to  national  importance  rests  very  largely  on  their  his- 
toric associations.  They  are  keen  enough  to  know  that 
this  title  greatly  depends  on  the  value  they  set  on  these 
associations.  Historic  symbols,  antiquities,  and  the  posses- 
sion of  the  Holy  Places  of  ancient  poetry  and  art,  are  thus 
to  the  Greeks  quite  as  important  as  an  army  or  a  fleet,  and 
indeed  much  more  so.  The  nation  is  thus  quite  fanatically 
jealous  of  its  national  monuments,  which  play  a  larger  part 
in  Greece  than  in  other  modern  nations.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  museums  and  antiquities  of  Greece  are  now  verv 
well  and  carefully  protected :  the  Acropolis  is  now  far  more 
secure  from  conceivable  accident  than  is  the  museum  in 
Bloomsbury.  The  idea  that  under  any  possible  conditions 
the  Acropolis  is  likely  to  be  exposed  to  modern  artillery  fire 
is  one  that  those  who  have  ever  seen  it  can  only  laugh  at. 
The  whole  Acropolis  is  fenced  and  guarded  just  as  the 
British  Museum  is.  If  a  drunken  sailor  ever  did  any  damage, 
it  could  only  be  by  escaping  the  guards,  just  as  a  madman 
once  smashed  our  Portland  vase. 


444  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Athens  is  now  a  central  art  school  for  all  nations,  and 
since  the  opening  of  the  railway  to  Salonica  and  Constanti- 
nople, is  frequented  like  Venice,  or  Florence;  and  to  all 
Europe  that  lies  south  and  east  of  Munich,  it  is  at  least  as 
accessible  as  London.  The  idea  that  Athens  is  a  place  as 
wild  and  remote  as  Baghdad,  where  Albanians  and  drunken 
sailors  engage  in  faction  fights,  whose  streets  are  a  sort  of 
Petticoat  Lane  and  Whitechapel,  and  where  an  occasional 
Milord  arrives  with  his  dragoman  and  tents,  is  an  idea 
derived  from  the  "travels"  of  our  youth.  Athens  is  now  a 
city  as  well  policed,  as  orderly,  as  cultivated,  and  as  full 
of  intelligent  visitors  as  any  of  the  towns  of  Germany, 
Italy,  or  France.  As  a  centre  of  archaeological  study,  to  the 
whole  world,  Old  and  New,  Athens  is  now  a  more  important 
school  than  London. 

All  these  arguments  are  mere  pretexts  to  bolster  up  — 
possession.  They  would  equally  apply  to  all  other  national 
monuments  which  a  stronger  power  desired  to  keep  from  a 
weaker.  When  Napoleon  I.  ransacked  the  churches  and 
galleries  of  Italy,  the  French  also  could  talk  big  about  the 
superior  safety  of  Paris,  the  miserable  carelessness  of  the 
Italians,  the  paramount  interests  of  High  Art,  and  their 
own  noble  capital  as  the  centre  of  civilisation.  When 
Napoleon  III.  captured  Rome,  when  Bismarck  captured 
Paris,  each  might  have  carried  off  the  contents  of  the  Vati- 
can and  the  Louvre,  to  take  them  out  of  the  keeping  of  a 
degenerate  race  who  were  always  bringing  an  enemy  about 
their  ears,  and  to  guard  these  works  of  art  as  a  precious 
inheritance  "for  the  use  and  profit  of  mankind." 

I  appeal  to  the  public  conscience,  for  the  sake  of  Eng- 
land's good  name  and  in  the  true  interests  of  art  as  a  moral 
and  a  social  force.  In  that  appeal  I  have  been  warmly 
supported   both   at    home   and    abroad.     And   by   love   for 


THE    ELGIN    MARBLES  445 

England  and  for  Art,  I  understand  something  wider  and 
more  human  than  sneers  at  the  barbarism  of  the  foreigner 
and  the  simpering  of  dilettanti  over  objects  in  glass-cases- 
I  would  rather  see  our  island  "inviolate,"  by  virtue  of  her 
generous  bearing  to  all,  than  by  the  menace  of  her  guns  and 
the  trophies  she  may  have  won  in  battle.  And  to  me  the 
love  of  Art  is  inseparable  from  love  and  reverence  for  the 
great  artist,  for  the  dust  whereon  he  trod  and  with  which  he 
is  mingled,  with  the  genius  loci  of  the  temple  of  art  which 
he  raised  and  loved,  and  with  the  national  traditions  to  which 
even  the  noblest  art  can  add  but  a  mere  deepening  of  the 
glow. 


XX 

A   POMPEII   FOR   THE   THIRTIETH 
CENTURY 

{From  "The  Nineteenth  Century,"  1890) 

We  live  in  an  age  of  archaeological  research;  and  there 
never  was  a  time  when  so  much  industry  and  genius  were 
given  to  restore  for  the  men  of  to-day  the  exact  life  of  our 
ancestors  in  the  past.  All  ages,  all  races,  all  corners  of  the 
planet  have  been  ransacked  to  yield  up  their  buried  me- 
morials of  distant  times.  Rome,  Pompeii,  Athens,  Olym- 
pia,  Delphi,  Asia  Minor,  Egypt,  Assyria,  Babylon,  India, 
Mexico,  have  rewarded  the  learned  digger  with  priceless 
relics.  The  Rosetta  stone,  the  Behistun  rock,  the  Fayum, 
have  revealed  entire  epochs  of  civilisation  to  our  delighted 
eyes.  We  have  a  passion  for  looking  backwards  —  and  it  is 
one  of  our  most  worthy  and  most  useful  pursuits.  There  is 
one  age,  however,  for  which  our  archaeological  zeal  does 
nothing.  We  are  absorbed  in  thinking  about  our  ancestors: 
why  do  we  not  give  a  thought  to  our  descendants?  Should 
we  not  provide  something  for  posterity?  Let  us,  once  in  a 
way,  take  to  looking  forwards;  and,  with  all  our  archaeo- 
logical experience  and  all  the  resources  of  science,  deliber- 
ately prepare  a  Pompeii,  a  Karnak,  a  Hissarlik,  for  the 
students  of  the  thirtieth  century. 

Every  student  of  history  knows  that  the  vast  superiority 
we  possess  to-day  over  the  age  of  Shakespeare  and  Bacon 

446 


A   NEW   POMPEII  447 

in  our  accurate  understanding  of  the  past  is  due  to  the  anti- 
quarian research  and  the  marvellous  discoveries  of  the  eigh- 
teenth and  the  nineteenth  centuries.  The  unearthing  of 
Pompeii,  of  the  Forum,  the  Acropolis,  of  Budrun,  the  tombs 
along  the  Nile,  and  the  palaces  of  Nineveh,  the  deciphering 
of  the  Egvptian  hieroglyphs,  of  the  arrow-head  inscriptions, 
of  Gnossos,  the  Fayum,  Delphi,  of  the  Etruscan  tombs,  of 
the  Runic  monuments,  the  recovery  of  the  Institutes  of 
Gaius  by  Niebuhr,  the  collection  of  the  Vatican  Manu- 
scripts, the  labours  of  such  men  as  Niebuhr,  Mommsen, 
Savigny,  Curtius,  Canina,  Lepsius,  Brugsch,  Layard,  Mas- 
pero,  Lanciani,  Budge,  Petrie,  Evans,  Hogarth;  the  editing 
of  the  State  Papers  —  all  that  is  represented  by  the  British 
Museum,  the  Record  Office,  the  Louvre,  Boulak,  Olympia, 
Delphi,  and  the  libraries  of  Berlin  and  the  Vatican  —  have 
enabled  historians  accurately  to  present  to  our  minds  the 
thoughts,  the  life,  the  very  look  of  the  past.  After  infinite 
labour  and  through  cruel  disappointments,  we  are  beginning 
to  feel  the  unbroken  biography  of  the  human  race  as  a 
single  and  intelligible  story. 

And  yet  how  incessant  the  labour  by  which  these  triumphs 
have  been  won !  How  heartrending  the  disappointments, 
how  cruel  the  waste,  how  irreparable  the  loss !  We,  the 
heirs  of  time,  stand,  like  Crusoe  the  morning  after  the  wreck, 
mournfully  surveying  the  destruction,  and  eagerly  picking  up 
the  priceless  fragments  that  chance  and  the  elements  have 
spared.  The  glorious  ship  was  but  a  mass  of  splinters ;  his 
comrades  lay  tossing  with  the  seaweed  beneath  the  waves; 
the  stores  and  tools,  merchandise,  food,  arms,  books,  instru- 
ments and  charts  were  swept  into  the  deep,  whilst  here  and 
there  he  could  pick  out  a  gun,  a  saw,  some  damaged  biscuit 
and  a  soaked  Bible.  It  was  his  all.  So  we  rescue  now  and 
then  the  torso  of  a  Melian  Aphrodite,  a  Vatican  Testament, 


448  REALITIES   AND   IDEALS 

the  Domesday  Survey,  a  fresco  from  the  Palatine  or  the 
tombs  of  the  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  kings. 

But,  if  we  had  the  seventy  plays  of  yEschylus,  the  hundred 
and  more  of  Sophocles,  the  whole  of  Polybius,  of  Livius,  of 
Tacitus,  if  we  had  Dante's  entire  writings  in  his  own  manu- 
script, if  we  had  an  authentic,  perfect  holograph  Shake- 
speare, if  we  had  intact  one  single  statue  of  the  great  age, 
one  absolutely  genuine  portrait  of  some  ancient  hero,  poet, 
or  thinker !  If  we  could  only  imagine  what  the  Agamemnon 
or  the  Clouds  sounded  like,  as  men  sat  and  listened  on  the 
tiers  of  the  Theatre  of  Dionysus !  Whole  lives  have  been 
spent  in  trying  to  restore  for  us  the  "Zeus"  or  the  "Athene" 
of  Pheidias,  as  they  shone  forth  all  ivory  and  gold ;  in  recall- 
ing to  life  an  Egyptian  sacred  procession,  a  Roman  triumph, 
a  mediaeval  army,  a  pilgrimage  to  Canterbury  or  Jerusalem. 
How  cruelly  chance  has  gone  against  us !  Cursed  was  the 
fire  that  consumed  the  "Cnidian  Aphrodite"  of  Praxiteles; 
abhorred  be  the  sea  which  overwhelmed  Michel  Angelo's  de- 
signs for  the  "Inferno"  !  If  science  had  been  able  then  to 
preserve  for  us  but  a  tithe  of  the  precious  things  which  fire, 
water,  air,  the  brutal  ignorance  of  man,  the  blear-eyed 
stupidity  of  monks,  the  ambition  of  kings,  the  greed  of 
traders,  and  the  slow  all-consuming  dust  of  ages  have  de- 
stroyed !  If  some  contemporary  photograph  could  have  pre- 
sented for  us  the  faces  of  Pericles,  Socrates,  Virgil,  Alfred, 
Columbus,  Shakespeare;  or  the  Parthenon  as  it  looked  on 
the  day  of  its  dedication;  or  the  Forum,  when  Julius  tri- 
umphed over  the  Gauls !  If  some  phonograph  could  repeat 
to  us  the  very  tones  of  vEschylus  reading  his  Prometheus,  or 
Virgil's  as  he  recited  the  sixth  JEneid  to  Augustus,  or  the 
very  voice  of  Saint  Bernard  at  the  Council  of  Sens,  or  of 
Shakespeare  as  he  played  the  Ghost  in  Hamlet  ?  Or  —  oh 
that  the  invention  of  printing  could  have  been  antedated, 


A   NEW    POMPEII  449 

and  that  we  had  exact  copies  of  the  entire  works  of  Tyrtaeus 
and  Sappho,  of  Menander  and  Ennius,  of  Archimedes,  Aris- 
totle, and  Pythagoras !  If  but  one  library,  one  cathedral, 
one  castle,  one  market-place  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  been 
preserved  for  us  untouched,  unfaded,  with  all  its  surround- 
ings perfect ! 

The  proposal  I  make  is  this.  Let  the  science  and  learn- 
ing of  the  twentieth  century  do  for  the  thirtieth  century  what 
we  would  give  millions  sterling  to  buy,  if  the  tenth  century 
a.d.,  or  the  tenth  century  B.C.,  had  been  able  and  willing  to 
do  it  for  us.  In  other  words,  let  us  deliberately,  with  all 
the  resources  of  modern  science,  and  by  utilising  all  its 
wonderful  instruments,  prepare  for  future  ages  a  sort  of 
Pompeii  or  Boulak  museum,  or  Vatican  library,  wherein  the 
language,  the  literature,  the  science,  the  art,  the  life,  the 
manners,  the  appearance  of  our  own  age  and  its  best  repre- 
sentatives may  be  treasured  up  as  a  sacred  deposit  for  the 
instruction  of  our  distant  descendants.  Let  us  no  longer 
leave  it  to  chance  whether  our  knowledge  and  our  life  be 
preserved  for  them  or  not.  Let  us  do  all  that  forethought, 
experience,  and  science  can  do  to  perpetuate  the  best  products 
and  the  noblest  men  of  the  present  age.  The  thing  is  done 
in  every  royal  and  important  family.  Portraits  are  accumu- 
lated by  each  generation  to  give  to  its  successors  the  living 
effigy  of  its  ancestors.  All  published  books  are  by  law  de- 
posited in  the  British  Museum.  A  complete  series  of  all 
coins,  seals,  and  medals  is  carefully  preserved  in  more  than 
one  public  institution.  Coins  form,  perhaps,  the  most  ab- 
solutely trustworthy  and  continuous  series  of  monuments  in 
the  whole  range  of  our  materials  for  historic  research ;  for 
they  alone  are  able  to  withstand  the  attacks  of  time.  It  is 
usual,  when  a  public  building  is  begun,  to  place,  in  a  cere- 
monial manner,  a  series  of  coins,  a  few  documents,  and  a 

2G 


450  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

copy  of  the  Times  newspaper  under  the  first  stone.  That 
is  indeed  a  futile  and  trivial  mode  of  providing  for  the  histo- 
ric research  of  ages  to  come.  But  it  contains  the  principle. 
And  the  present  proposal  is  simply  to  do,  on  a  truly  national 
scale,  and  in  a  complete,  systematic,  and  scientific  mode,  what 
on  a  local  scale,  and  in  a  shamefaced,  serio-comic  style,  and 
with  much  tomfoolery  of  the  aldermanic  sort,  we  do,  up  and 
down  the  country,  a  dozen  times  in  every  year. 

The  problem  is  this  —  to  preserve  for  the  next  ten  (or  even 
twenty)  centuries  a  small  museum  in  which  we  may  store  a 
careful  selection  of  those  products  of  to-day  which  we  think 
will  be  most  useful  and  instructive  to  our  distant  descendants. 
The  conditions  to  be  observed  are  these :  — 

i.  A  place,  as  far  as  human  foresight  can  tell,  secure  from 
any  possible  change,  physical,  social,  industrial,  or  mechani- 
cal —  so  strong,  so  remote,  so  protected  that  nothing  but 
great  labour,  scientific  appliances,  and  public  authority  could 
ever  again  disturb  it. 

2.  The  construction  in  such  a  spot  of  a  National  Safe, 
on  a  simple  scale  and  at  moderate  cost,  scientifically  contrived 
to  protect  valuable  things  in  deposit ;  but  such  as  to  awaken 
no  possible  opposition  from  artistic,  economical,  political,  or 
religious  susceptibilities. 

3.  An  arrangement  so  that  each  century,  in  its  turn,  might 
have  access  to  its  own  safe,  without  disturbing  the  rest. 

4.  The  placing  therein  a  rational  and  fairly  representative 
collection  of  the  best  works,  memorials,  and  specimens  of 
our  own  age. 

5.  The  construction  of  such  a  museum  within  moderate 
limits  and  at  a  practicable  cost. 

6.  The  protection  of  the  museum  by  some  public  sanction 
and  national  authority. 

Let  us  examine  each  of  these  conditions  in  detail. 


A   NEW   POMPEII  451 

I.  A  strong  room,  which  is  to  last  ten  centuries,  must  be 
placed  far  from  any  city,  in  a  remote  spot  not  liable  to  be 
wanted.  If  it  were  in  the  capital,  or  indeed  anywhere  near 
the  haunts  of  man,  some  Sir  Edward  Watkin,  or  J.  S.  Forbes 
of  the  future,  would  be  driving  a  railway  through  it,  or  make 
it,  perhaps,  the  central  Balloon  Terminus  of  the  Universe. 
Like  St.  Paul's,  the  Tower  of  London,  or  Westminster 
Abbey,  it  might  be  wanted  by  the  enterprising  engineer,  or  a 
syndicate  about  to  found  a  new  electric  city  or  a  continent 
in  the  air.  I  propose  a  spot,  like  Salisbury  Plain,  which  it  is 
difficult  to  imagine  that  even  Sir  Edward  Watkin  could 
ever  persuade  Parliament  to  give  him,  or  that  even  in  the 
thirtieth  century  could  ever  be  included  in  the  suburbs  of 
London.  Say  Salisbury  Plain,  a  spot  beside  Stonehenge; 
nay,  it  might  be  incorporated  with  Stonehenge  itself,  and 
thus  link  the  centuries  a.d.  to  those  B.C. 

II.  No  building  of  any  kind  would  be  safe;  and  none  is 
wanted.  A  Pyramid  would  serve  the  purpose ;  but  we  have 
no  Pharaohs  and  no  Chosen  People;  and  though  Pyramids 
may  be  built  without  straw,  we  cannot  as  yet  build  them 
without  hands.  Any  building,  however  massive,  may  be 
destroyed.  Fire,  war,  insurrection,  greed,  taste,  caprice, 
and  necessity  have  it  down  in  the  end.  The  Tower  of  Babel, 
Babylon  itself,  the  Colosseum,  and  the  Temple  of  Ephesus, 
have  all  gone  the  way  of  all  brick  and  stone.  Besides,  a 
building  would  cost  much  money.  It  would  provoke  the 
communists,  the  contractors,  and  the  art  societies  to  destroy 
it,  or  convert  it.  Lord  Grimthorpe  would  want  to  restore  it. 
And  he,  William  Morris,  and  Mr.  Cavendish  Bentinck  would 
squirt  vitriol  at  each  other  about  it,  and  its  destiny.  No! 
A  building  of  any  kind  is  quite  out  of  the  question,  and  none 
is  wanted. 

All  that  we  want  is  a  vaulted  chamber.     And  this  must  be 


452  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

subterranean.  It  would  practically  occupy  no  space  at  all 
on  the  surface,  or  none  that  any  man  could  ever  want.  A 
hundred  pounds  might  buy  the  site,  or  we  might  utilise  a 
disused  mine  or  drive  a  gallery  underneath  Skiddaw  or  the 
Malvern  Hills.  Nothing  is  simpler  than  a  few  vaults  —  dug, 
say,  beside  Stonehenge,  cased  twenty  feet  thick  with  the 
strongest  known  cement.  A  plain  granite  portal  with  a  suit- 
able inscription  would  be  the  sole  architectural  feature. 
When  finished  and  filled,  the  museum  would  be  solemnly 
closed  up  with  twenty  or  thirty  feet  of  cement,  and  a  plain 
granite  block  between  the  granite  piers  would  finally  bar  the 
entrance.  There  would  be  neither  doors,  keys,  nor  locks. 
Nothing  but  a  gang  of  navvies,  working  for  weeks  under  a 
staff  of  engineers,  could  ever  open  it  again.  It  would  need 
no  guarding,  no  insurance,  and  no  outlay.  Fire,  destruction, 
contractors,  even  an  earthquake,  could  not  touch  it.  So  long 
as  this  island  keeps  its  head  above  the  German  Ocean,  so 
long  the  National  Safe  would  exist. 

III.  The  National  Safe  might  consist  of  a  gallery  with  a 
series  of  subterranean  vaults,  like  the  catacombs  at  Rome, 
or  the  chambers  under  the  Pyramids.  The  scheme  might 
be  carried  to  any  extent;  but  for  simplicity  we  may  limit 
our  views  to  the  next  ten  centuries,  and  provide  ten  vaults, 
each  thirty  or  forty  feet  square,  with  perhaps  a  double  or  treble 
space  for  the  tenth.  Each  vault  would  contain  a  careful 
collection  of  products,  works,  inscriptions,  pictures,  books, 
instruments,  and  the  like,  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Each 
vault  might  be  opened  officially  by  some  public  authority  and 
with  legislative  sanction  only,  on  the  last  year  of  each  century. 
As  the  collection  would  be  in  duplicate,  each  vault  containing 
practically  the  same  objects,  there  would  be  no  inducement 
to  anticipate  the  ages  by  opening  any  vault  before  the  ap- 
pointed time.     Each  century,  having  opened  its  own  vault, 


A   NEW   POMPEII  453 

might  make  its  own  deposit,  seal  it  up,  and  finally  close  the 
general  entrance  in  the  same  way,  or  as  its  own  improved 
scientific  knowledge  might  suggest.  The  tenth  vault  might 
hold  a  special  and  fuller  collection,  as  being  the  more  distant 
and  liable  to  decay. 

IV.  As  to  the  mode  of  preservation  the  present  writer 
would  rather  make  no  suggestions.  It  is  a  problem  for 
engineers,  physicists,  mechanicians,  opticians,  photographers, 
architects,  and  specialists  of  various  kinds.  It  might  call  out 
a  body  of  ingenious  suggestions ;  and  the  problem  appeals  to 
great  numbers  of  experts.  How  can  we  preserve  untouched 
for  a  thousand  years  books,  pictures,  records,  portraits, 
models,  instruments,  coins,  medals,  specimens,  and  products 
of  various  kinds?  We  may  assume  that,  as  an  outside  casing, 
some  form  of  cement,  to  some  thickness  yet  to  be  determined, 
would  be  an  almost  absolute  protection  from  fire,  water, 
plunder,  and  even  a  restoration  committee.  Inscriptions 
cut  upon  lava  and  cased  with  glass  might  be  trusted  to  see 
out  the  life  of  the  planet.  Let  experts  tell  us  how  to  protect 
books.  A  few  precious  poems  or  the  like  might  be  printed 
on  vellum  or  composition,  and  secured  in  hermetically-sealed 
glass  cases.  Photogravures  on  stone,  similarly  protected 
and  with  all  light  excluded,  might  remain  for  centuries.  A 
few  choice  paintings,  if  needful  on  panel,  or  on  porcelain  or 
ivory,  might  be  sealed  up  in  air-tight  boxes.  If  experts  could 
suggest  a  mode  of  protecting  photographs  from  decay,  or  of 
transferring  a  photographic  picture  to  some  indestructible 
substance,  it  is  clear  that  we  might  preserve  for  the  thirtieth 
century  photographic  portraits  of  our  great  men,  views  of 
our  public  buildings,  of  our  daily  life,  of  many  a  historic 
incident. 

What  would  Lord  Rosebery  or  the  Duke  of  Westminster 
bid  at  Christie's  for  a  permanent  photograph  on  porcelain  of 


454  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

Augustus  at  supper  with  Virgil,  Horace,  and  Ovid  round  him, 
or  of  Alfred  sitting  in  council  at  Winchester,  or  of  Edward 
the  First  in  his  first  Parliament,  or  the  signing  of  Magna 
Carta,  or  the  battle  of  Agincourt,  or  even  Elizabeth  listening 
to  a  play  of  Shakespeare?  And  why  should  not  the  phono- 
graph be  tried  also?  The  Laureate  would  recite  the  Prin- 
cess, and  his  chosen  bits  from  In  Memoriam  into  a  phono- 
graphic box,  which  it  would  be  the  business  of  Mr.  Edison 
to  protect  for  a  thousand  years.  A  copy  of  the  Encyclopaedia 
Britannic  a  would  give  the  thirtieth  century  an  adequate  idea 
of  our  present  knowledge  and  opinions.  Mr.  Gladstone  and 
Lord  Salisbury,  Lord  Rosebery  and  Professor  Huxley,  might 
live  again  by  photograph,  phonograph,  and  preserved  speeches 
and  writings.  A  copy  of  Hansard,  of  the  Times,  of  the 
Graphic,  of  Bradshaw,  of  Whitaker's  Almanack,  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  a  set  of  Ordnance  maps,  the  British  Museum 
Catalogue,  the  catalogues  of  the  Art  galleries,  would  teach  the 
thirtieth  century  more  about  the  nineteenth  than  a  thou- 
sand scholars  have  been  able  to  teach  us  about  the  tenth. 
If  one  had  but  a  Whitaker's  Almanack  for  the  year  i  a.d. 
or  for  the  year  iooo,  or  1300,  or  even  1600 !  Models  of  a 
locomotive,  of  an  ironclad  first-rate,  of  the  Forth  Bridge,  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  might  be  thrown  in,  along  with  a 
dressed  doll  representing  the  Prime  Minister  or  a  fine  lady 
dressed  for  a  drawing-room.  There  is  no  limit  to  the  exact 
and  interesting  information  which  we  might  store  up  for  the 
use  of  our  posterity,  if  science  will  only  show  us  how  to  pre- 
serve photographic  pictures  indefinitely,  and  how  to  protect 
books,  drawings,  paintings,  instruments,  and  specimens  for 
a  thousand  years. 

A  wide  field  would  be  open  to  our  physicists  and  inventors 
to  discover  processes  by  which  things  in  daily  use  could  be 
protected   against   decay   and   the   action   of  the   elements. 


A   NEW   POMPEII  455 

Whether  any  metal,  or  some  form  of  porcelain,  or  a  compo- 
sition be  the  better  material,  we  need  not  decide.  It  might  be 
worth  while  to  place  specimens  of  various  materials  together, 
so  as  to  give  posterity  the  means  of  judging  which  material, 
under  exactly  the  same  conditions,  ultimately  proves  the  most 
desirable.  But,  having  found  a  suitable  material,  or  a  suit- 
able casing,  the  most  delicate  and  fragile  of  our  ordinary 
surroundings  might  be  preserved  for  our  most  distant  de- 
scendants. Portraits  by  hand  and  by  photographic  process 
of  our  foremost  statesmen,  poets,  thinkers,  and  men  of  mark, 
copies  of  our  most  important  books,  catalogues,  plans,  maps, 
views,  dictionaries,  and  the  like,  would  be  of  surpassing  in- 
terest a  thousand  years  hence.  If  the  phonograph  could  be 
protected  from  decay,  the  thirtieth  century  might  listen  to  a 
speech  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  a  poem  by  the  Laureate,  a  song 
by  Madame  Patti,  and  a  sonata  by  M.  Joachim.  Sets  of 
the  Ordnance  maps,  plans,  geographical  atlases,  post-office 
directories,  catalogues  of  public  libraries,  and  dictionaries 
of  various  kinds  would  be  useful  to  distant  ages.  Let  us 
reflect  on  the  unique  value  to  the  historian  of  the  rare  official 
documents  which  have  survived  —  the  Domesday  Survey, 
the  Great  Charter,  the  English  Chronicle,  meagre  and  acci- 
dental as  these  notices  too  often  are.  Of  what  extreme  value 
to  the  historian  of  the  thirtieth  century  would  be  the  posses- 
sion of  a  complete  official  record  of  England  in  the  twentieth 
century ! 

There  are  a  few  things  to  which  attention  might  be  specially 
directed,  as  being  such  as  are  liable  to  disappear  altogether, 
or  such  as  are  certain  to  undergo  continual  change.  Such 
are  plans  of  great  cities  and  great  public  buildings,  maps  of 
the  country,  marine  and  geological  charts,  pictures  and  de- 
scriptions of  the  actual  fauna  and  flora.  Special  care  might 
be  given  to  preserve  for  distant  ages  some  exact  record  of  the 


456  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

animals  and  plants  which  there  is  too  much  reason  to  fear 
will  have  disappeared  from  the  planet  long  before  many 
centuries  have  passed.  It  is  a  melancholy  reflection  that 
our  descendants  will  never  see  a  most  beautiful,  useful,  and 
unique  substance  —  which  we  so  carelessly  abuse  and  waste 
—  ivory.  The  elephant,  the  last  of  the  great  mammoth 
tribe,  which  savage  fools  kill  for  "sport,"  and  foolish  savages 
kill  for  gain,  can  hardly  last  another  century  on  this  planet. 
In  the  thirtieth  century  the  elephant  will  be  a  memory  far 
more  distant  than  the  mammoth.  And  with  the  elephant 
will  disappear  no  doubt  the  seal,  the  whale,  and  all  the 
marine  mammals,  whose  habits  and  form  expose  them  to  the 
reckless  cupidity  of  man.  By  the  thirtieth  century  we  may 
fear  that  all  the  larger  wild  mammals  will  have  disappeared  — 
certainly  the  elephant,  the  rhinoceros,  the  giraffe,  the  hippo- 
potamus, with  all  rare  African  beasts;  no  doubt  also,  the 
lion,  the  tiger,  the  bear,  the  buffalo,  and  their  congeners. 

Of  course  the  wolf,  the  fox,  the  chamois,  the  antelope,  the 
wild  boar,  the  kangaroo,  and  the  like,  are  doomed  to  early 
extinction  before  the  march  of  civilisation  and  the  vile  thirst 
for  "sport."  We  ought  not  to  leave  to  our  descendants  the 
task  of  piecing  together  their  scattered  bones,  as  we  have 
had  to  do  for  the  Megatherium  and  the  Dinornis.  Of  all 
the  fauna  which  we  may  reasonably  expect  to  be  "extinct"  a 
thousand  years  hence,  we  ought  to  leave  our  posterity  an 
exact  and  full  record. 

In  the  same  way,  we  ought  to  leave  them  a  record  of  the 
actual  state  of  this  planet  and  our  island.  When  we  reflect 
on  the  enormous  value  to  us  of  the  travels  of  Herodotus,  of 
the  paintings  on  Egyptian  monuments,  of  the  engraved  plan 
of  the  Forum,  of  the  Bayeux  tapestry,  of  the  Hereford  Mappa 
Mundi,  and  of  a  few  rude  sketches  in  illuminated  manu- 
scripts, we  may  estimate  what  it  would  be  to  our  descendants 


A    NEW    POMPEII  457 

to  have  full,  accurate,  and  contemporary  maps  and  plans  of 
England  as  it  stands  to-day.  London  in  the  thirtieth  century 
may  be  as  desolate  as  Birs  Nimroud  or  Egyptian  Thebes. 
What  a  boon  will  it  be  to  the  New  Zealand  globe-trotter  of 
2908,  as  he  sits  on  the  last  broken  arch  of  London  Bridge  to 
which  his  electric  balloon  is  moored,  and  takes  his  luncheon 
of  ambrosia  and  manna,  to  have  by  his  side,  as  he  tries  to  trace 
the  mound  which  covers  St.  Paul's  and  the  Abbey,  an  electro- 
photographic reprint  of  the  Ordnance  plan  of  1908!  And 
if  to  this  plan  of  the  ancient  city  he  could  add  authentic  views 
of  London,  as  it  appeared  in  the  dim  light  of  hoar  antiquity, 
how  well-informed,  to  the  ninth  power  of  a  German  professor, 
would  be  our  young  friend  from  the  Antipodes ! 

It  may  be  said  that  these  things  will  take  care  of  them- 
selves, and  that  all  which  is  useful  will  survive.  A  few  great 
books  no  doubt  will  survive  a  thousand  years  and  more. 
But  there  will  be  infinite  interest  a  thousand  years  hence  in  the 
ordinary  books  of  information  which  are  very  likely  to  perish. 
Our  curious  young  New  Zealander  of  2908  would  no  doubt 
much  prefer  a  Whitaker's  Almanack  or  a  Bradshaw's  Rail- 
way Guide  of  1908  to  all  the  works  of  Mr.  Froude  or  Robert 
Browning.  Which  would  we  rather  have  to-day  —  the  epics 
of  Lucius  Varius,  or  a  Post-Office  Directory  of  Rome  under 
Augustus?     These  things  should  not  be  left  to  chance. 

V.  And  now  comes  the  question :  —  How  is  this  to  be 
paid  for,  and  how  is  it  to  be  done  ?  A  question  not  so  diffi- 
cult as  it  seems.  In  a  normal  state  of  society,  one  would 
say  that  it  was  the  business  of  the  State  or  the  Church.  But 
there  is  no  State  and  no  Church  now-a-days :  these  are  obso- 
lete legal  formulas.  If  Mr.  Balfour  proposed  it,  Mr.  Hardie 
would  foam  at  him  with  indignant  patriotism.  If  Mr. 
Asquith  proposed  it,  the  Suffragettes  would  mock  at  him, 
as  the  children  mocked  at  Elisha  the  Prophet,  saying,  "Go 


458  REALITIES    AND    IDEALS 

up,  thou  bald  head!"  And  if  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury proposed  it,  the  Dissenters  would  rise  up  as  one  man. 
And  if  Dr.  Clifford  suggested  it,  Churchmen  would  see  in  it 
a  fresh  attack  on  their  beloved  Establishment.  So  State 
and  Church  are  alike  out  of  the  question :  both  are  reduced 
to  a  condition  of  deadlock. 

It  must  be  done  by  voluntary  effort  and  by  free  gift,  if 
at  all.  Perhaps,  if  the  Treasury  were  not  asked  for  a  penny, 
they  would  consent  to  giving  the  movement  some  simple 
legislative  authority,  or  the  sanction  of  a  Royal  Commission. 
The  outlay  in  money  would  be  very  moderate,  for  neither 
costly  building  nor  valuable  site  is  needed.  All  that  is  abso- 
lutely wanted  is  a  small  catacomb  somewhere  in  a  remote 
waste,  such  as  Salisbury  Plain,  not  more  expensive  to  make 
than  a  few  vaults  in  a  cemetery.  The  objects  stored  would 
not  be  intrinsically  of  much  market  value;  or,  if  they  were, 
they  might  be  looked  for  as  free  gifts.  The  difficulty  of 
the  committee  of  selection  would  be  to  refuse,  to  reject,  to 
exclude.  Artists,  authors,  inventors,  and  producers  of  all 
kinds  would  be  only  too  eager  to  deposit  works  which  would 
be  destined  to  so  distant  and  certain  an  immortality.  A 
Greek  or  Roman  temple  was  cram  full  of  votive  offerings 
of  great  beauty,  inscribed  with  the  names  of  donor  and 
artist,  which  century  after  century  remained  to  delight  and 
instruct  posterity.  We  gaze  to-day  with  profound  pathos  on 
the  simple  words  —  KAAAI AS  ANE0HKEN  IITPPOS 
EITOIHEEN — Callias  dedicated  this:  Pyrrhus  made  it. 
What,  if  the  temple  of  Delphi,  or  the  Cella  of  the  Parthenon, 
or  the  temple  of  Jupiter  Capitolinus,  had  been,  with  all  their 
contents,  sunk  in  the  earth  and  hermetically  sealed  until  our 
day !  With  what  wonder  and  joy  should  we  proceed  to 
open  and  survey  the  sacred  treasure-chamber !  And  what 
artist  or  patron  of  art  would  not  long  to  inscribe  his  name 


A    NEW    POMPEII  459 

on  the  offerings  which  would  one  day  be  the  object  of  such 
interest  ? 

If  Sir  Frederick  Leighton  had  dedicated  thus  his  "Psyche," 
Sir  J.  Millais  his  "Chill  October,"  Mr.  Watts  his  "Portrait 
of  Mr.  Gladstone,"  the  Laureate  his  Poems  printed  on 
vellum,  Mr.  Ruskin  the  manuscript  original  of  the  Modern 
Painters  with  his  own  sketches  for  his  published  works,  if 
Mr.  Gladstone  had  given  his  correspondence,  if  Lord  Roths- 
child would  offer  a  collection  of  historical  curios,  and  some 
other  collectors  would  supply  cases  of  autograph  writings 
and  letters,  a  series  of  contemporary  portraits  and  the  like, 
posterity  would  have  had  an  archaeological  "find"  such  as 
never  before  occurred  in  history.  Permission  to  inscribe 
the  name  of  author  or  donor  would  be  enough  to  cause  the 
committee  of  selection  to  be  inundated  with  offers  and  over- 
whelmed with  gifts. 

For  this  reason  it  would  be  necessary  to  clothe  the  com- 
mittee of  selection  with  a  national  character  and  some 
legislative  sanction.  A  Royal  Commission  of  men  repre- 
senting Art,  Science,  Literature,  Industry,  and  Statistics, 
could  easily  manage  an  undertaking  far  simpler  than  a 
Great  Exhibition.  Let  us  have  a  rest  from  Great  Exhibi- 
tions for  a  year  or  two;  and  try  to  organise  a  posthumous 
Exhibition  for  the  benefit  of  posterity.  As  to  funds,  since 
we  cannot  effect  a  post  obit  for  the  amount,  or  draw  a  cheque 
on  the  thirtieth  century,  a  simple  contrivance  will  suffice. 
It  will  be  reasonable  that  the  portal  of  the  National  Safe 
should  contain  a  statement  of  its  origin  and  purpose;  and 
such  statement  would  naturally  include  the  names  of  those 
who  assist  it.  A  statement  with  a  list  of  all  who  share  in 
the  work  might  fairly  be  inscribed  both  within  and  without 
the  chamber. 

VI.  All  that  is  needed  further  by  way  of  legislative  sane- 


460  REALITIES    AND   IDEALS 

tion  would  be  a  short  Act,  which  perhaps  would  not  be 
blocked  by  the  most  desperate  obstructive,  to  the  effect  that 
the  National  Safe  was  to  be  held  as  incorporated  with  the 
British  Museum,  held  in  trust  for  the  nation  by  the  trustees 
of  the  Museum,  and  protected  from  wanton  injury  by  the 
law  for  the  time  being  applying  to  the  protection  of  works 
of  art  and  interest  in  the  national  collections.  From  its 
own  enormous  strength,  the  National  Safe  would  not  be 
liable  to  accidental  or  mischievous  destruction.  And  as  it 
would  contain  nothing  of  market  value,  it  would  never  be 
exposed  to  plunder,  even  during  war  or  insurrection.  Ac- 
cess to  it  in  any  case  would  be  physically  difficult :  a  matter 
of  prolonged  engineering  labour.  But  to  prevent  the  pre- 
mature examination  of  its  contents,  out  of  mere  curiosity 
and  impatience,  the  Act  should  provide  that  it  could  only 
be  opened  by  formal  national  authority,  and  by  Act  of 
Parliament  ad  hoc,  or  such  supreme  legislative  Act  as  may 
hereafter  replace  our  Acts  of  Parliament  of  to-day. 

If,  with  means  so  simple,  and  without  any  call  on  the 
public  purse,  so  useful  an  end  can  be  obtained,  there  seems 
to  be  no  reasonable  objection  to  making  the  attempt.  Its 
enormous  value  and  interest  to  our  distant  descendants  is 
obvious.  That  posterity  has  done  nothing  for  us  is  a  clap- 
trap objection  which  we  need  not  stop  to  notice.  Nothing 
could  be  more  useful  than  to  think  about  posterity's  in- 
terests more  seriously  than  we  do,  to  leave  fewer  things  to 
chance,  and  to  husband  and  store  the  perishable  things  of 
this  earth.  The  lesson  of  history  is  continually  reminding 
us  of  the  cruel  and  wanton  destruction  wrought  by  genera- 
tion after  generation,  each  in  brutal  indifference  to  its  suc- 
cessor. Forests,  plantations,  animal  races,  mines,  and  a 
thousand  useful  things  are  being  consumed  or  driven  from 
the  face  of  the  earth.     A  few  centuries  more  and  the  hu- 


A    NEW    POMPEII  461 

man  race  will  have  exhausted  gold,  silver,  coal,  ivory,  fur, 
whalebone,  and  perhaps  oak  and  mahogany.  Substitutes 
of  course  will  be  found;  but  cat-skins  are  not  so  nice  as 
sable,  aluminium  is  not  so  beautiful  as  gold,  and  chemical 
or  vegetable  compounds  are  a  poor  makeshift  for  ivory.  It 
is  fearful  to  think  of  all  the  waste  and  destruction  that 
each  age  has  wrought  on  the  products  of  the  last.  The  ruin 
of  the  Acropolis  and  the  Forum  in  sheer  wantonness;  the 
burning  of  the  Alexandrian  Museum;  the  loss  of  priceless 
works  of  human  genius ;  the  statues  of  Praxiteles  and  Scopas 
burnt  to  make  mortar;  Greek  dramas  and  Roman  institutes 
erased  to  write  over  them  patristic  homilies;  temples  de- 
stroyed by  Vandals,  by  Catholics,  by  Saracens,  or  Norman 
adventurers;  mediaeval  cathedrals  gutted  by  Anabaptists, 
Independents,  and  Protestant  zealots  generally.  And  what 
Protestant  bigotry  has  spared,  in  our  own  day  is  "restored" 
away  by  Puginesque  committees  and  Lord  Grimthorpe's 
learning.  Quod  non  fecerunt  Barbari,  fecere  Barberini.  Let 
us  turn  over  a  new  leaf,  and  lay  by  out  of  our  abundance  a 
trifle  for  the  use  of  posterity. 

A  friend  tells  me  that  all  this  is  but  a  fresh  example  of 
the  self-consciousness  of  the  century.  I  would  rather  say 
of  its  "historical-mindedness,"  as  the  jargon  has  it.  It  is 
the  duty  of  an  age  to  be  self-conscious,  and  to  reflect  how 
its  acts  and  its  thoughts  will  appear  in  the  eyes  of  a  distant 
posterity.  It  is  mere  affectation  to  deny  that  our  doings 
and  our  lives  will  be  as  interesting  to  the  men  of  the  thirtieth 
century  as  the  doings  and  the  lives  of  the  tenth  century  are 
to  us.  It  may  well  be  that  our  descendants  may  smile  at 
the  simplicity,  the  ignorance,  and  the  faults  of  their  ances- 
tors, and  may  hold  very  cheaply  indeed  much  that  we  prize 
to-day.  It  will  be  a  useful  lesson  to  them  to  know  what  it 
was  that  we  thought  most  precious  or  most  worthy  to  pre- 


462  REALITIES   AND    IDEALS 

serve.  And  for  us  it  cannot  but  be  good  to  ask  ourselves 
what,  after  all,  of  our  present  age  will  be  thought  a  thou- 
sand years  hence  to  have  been  worth  preserving,  what  of  all 
our  eager  struggling  and  our  feverish  industry  will,  after  the 
lapse  of  ten  centuries,  be  still  judged  to  have  added  some- 
thing to  the  progress  of  mankind. 


OF  THE 

IIVEF 

OF 


14  DAY  USE 

LOAN  DEPT. 

R.newedb^stSSbT-  » immediate  recaU. 


-«4e^ — SW- 


4ttr-t198^5*" 


TT)  oi\_60m-10,'65 
L(F7763Bl0)476B 


